Week 14: Employee/Internal Communications (2)
Another fairly new social media device being used for internal communications in Google Wave. Although this is a new and not highly used device, it is receiving a great deal of talk from the social media world. The incentive behind its creation for the work place was to create a social media route for real-time collaboration and organization of ideas or to make team adjustments to documents. I think that as soon as this application is understood by companies crowd better, it will be another social networking boom. This is just another example of how technology is being used to stimulate open communication and employee relation strategy.
Another interesting and new way that internal communications is being used within technology is through iPhone applications. As noted in the presentation that was linked with this assignment, Kraft foods has an app for employee communications, but they are not the only ones to discover this tool. On the Apple website, there is an entire page for business collaboration apps. Applications such as the Cisco WebEx Meeting Center allow employees to attend meetings from their phone will full visuals and audio conferencing. Meetings can even be scheduled straight from the iPhone through this application. Users can view who is attending and even create individual chats with employees in attendance. This is just one of the many application tools offered that allow employees to stay connected outside the office.
Although many of these social media tools have increased employee networking and satisfaction, they still do not replace face-to-face communication. These tools should be used to compliment and add to a company’s efforts, but they should not completely replace the physical communication outreach that makes employees feel valued and truly connected. If social media and face-to-face communication can integrate appropriately, a company will be more likely to discover a high degree of success.