I went to a business conference today that I enjoyed far more than I thought I would.
It was about the role of online social networking in business: using it to improve recruitment, communication between staff, marketing to the outside world and so on.
I assumed it was going to be all about how company management would hijack the egalitarian nature of blogging, wikis and social networking sites such as Facebook and Second Life to their commercial advantage, and force staff to use them, always toeing the company line of course. And yes, that undertone is there.
But I was heartened by the approach taken by the speakers and most of the delegates I spoke to. There was huge support for a bottom up approach to social networking, whether it was trusting employees not to abuse access at work to Facebook and IM etc., or trusting them to contribute to business blogs without selling the store.
One speaker suggested arriving at a company policy for use of social networking by getting staff collaboration and input to the drafting via wikis. Another reminded us that if you treat staff like grown-ups, they’ll tend to behave like grown-ups. Why not leave early to watch your kid play football so long as you get the job done. We have the technology to work wherever we want.
I began to see the possible throwing-off of the paternalistic, top-down attitudes you see in most organisations. If senior managers (and marketing departments) can dump the need to control every word their employees utter, then perhaps we really will have workforces fully engaged in their jobs.
There’s always been an anarchy about the internet: maybe rather than trying to tame it, we can import some of it to our businesses. Perhaps we can begin to enjoy our work and form real (and virtual) friendships and communities with our colleagues.
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