Social networking at the office: are public sites the way to go? Or does your enterprise need more control?

HR Magazine, March, 2008 by Bill Roberts

A Silicon Valley company rattled the webisphere last fall when its chief executive officer announced a policy embracing company use of Facebook, a social networking web site. He urged his 800 employees to sign up for Facebook for free, and to use it to network with one another and to spend time each Friday getting to know far-flung fellow workers.

Facebook Fridays, they call it.

The company, Serena Software Inc., based in San Mateo, Calif., even sent out a press release that quoted CEO Jeremy Burton: "Social networking tools like Facebook can bring us back together, help us get to know each other as people, help us understand our business and our products, and help us better serve our customers."

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Social networking numbers among the Web 2.0 technologies that can help a company foster communication and collaboration. (See "Counting on Collaboration" on page 47 of the October 2007 issue of HR Magazine.) But do most companies really want to use Face-book, MySpace or other public web sites as their social networks?

It works for Serena. But for most businesses, using any public site as the corporate social network may be too big a cultural stretch. What should not be a stretch is the use of social networking software that can be controlled within the corporate firewall. Adopters of such software have become convinced that it will bring dispersed workers closer together.

A key objective of a year-old social network initiative at Nestle USA Inc., the Glendale, Calif.-based subsidiary of Nestle S.A. of Vevey, Switzerland, is to "break down functional and location-based silos," says Alexis Bergen, manager of corporate and brand affairs. It is "to encourage employees to 'meet' and engage with employees they hadn't already met. Employees who do this are better workers and more efficient."

Weighing Options

Facebook and MySpace are the leading public social networking web sites. Users can upload personal information, including photos and videos, to share with friends. Both sites allow interest groups and companies to set up restricted areas for invited users only. They also allow the use of outside applications.

Many organizations, including the CIA, use Facebook to post job openings. Yet many of these same organizations block access to Facebook from the corporate intranet.

TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications LLC, a recruitment advertising agency in New York City, recently launched an application that its clients' employees can use to promote job openings from their Facebook profiles. Lawson Software Inc., based in St. Paul, Minn., offers a similar application.

Before using sites like Facebook and MySpace, with tens of millions of users--or LinkedIn, a business-oriented site with fewer users--for corporate purposes, executives should do homework to decide if using a public site as the corporate social network would be preferable to buying a commercial product that offers similar functions but with the added protection of command-and-control features within the corporate firewall.

Here is how several companies, including Serena, approached the decision to adopt social networking technology.

'Friends' at Work

With 800 employees in 29 offices in 14 countries, Serena, having grown through acquisitions, is more geographically distributed than many larger companies. About 30 percent of employees work from home. The headquarters has 90 workers, and the largest group of employees is the 200 in the Hillsboro, Ore., office.

"From a cultural standpoint, bringing together a lot of disparate corporate cultures can be a challenge, and we see Facebook as helping that effort," says Mary Helen Waldo, Serena's vice president of global HR. "How do you communicate when people never see each other or, if they do, it is just once or twice a year? It has been borne out in my years in HR that when you know each other as people--what makes you tick, how you make decisions--you can work together more effectively." Burton, Waldo's boss, says Facebook can be a virtual water cooler.

Serena officials considered adopting commercial social networking software launched on its intranet, but they decided this would make the effort too formal. The company uses commercial social networking software with customers and partners.

Serena doesn't require employees to use Facebook, but more than 90 percent have profiles. So as not to appear to be Big Brother, Serena does not track individual use of Facebook. But Waldo gets a tally of total usage, and she calculates that employees use the site for an average of less than 10 minutes per week--not exactly a time drain.

In keeping with Serena's open culture, there are no rules for Facebook use, but the code of conduct applies. So far, the only issues have been hypothetical ones. "We felt our workforce was mature enough to do this," says Waldo.

Governance a Driver

Dow Chemical Co., in Midland, Mich., sees the virtual world in a different light. A relatively early adopter of intranet and various Web 2.0 technologies, Dow is not technophobic. Company officials understand the potential of social networking, especially to keep in touch with retirees and other former employees. However, Dow wanted some level of control, so it installed commercial software protected by its firewall. Facebook was not considered.