While at the Gartner Portal and Collaboration Summit this week, I got the chance to ask one of Gartner’s analysts over breakfast (I’ll be liberally paraphrasing here) the following:
“I hear all the time that the ‘Gen Y-ers or Millennials’ are going to be ‘demanding social software in the enterprise’ and companies had better get with the program or they’ll be behind the times. Is that really true?”
I wanted to ask, because I don’t remember “demanding” much of anything when I entered the workforce, but instead adapting to the systems that were already in place. It has always seemed strange to me that this younger generation was going to get to throw temper tantrums and get what they want (whether useful or not).
The Gartner analyst offered a thoughtful response (again I’m paraphrasing themes rather than recording a direct quote). He had a few of points:
- The “digital natives” (as he called them, borrowing Marc Prensky’s term) will already be using social software like Twitter and Facebook
- A company can choose to embrace this with its own tools (and get at least some, or possibly a lot, of value out of it), or ignore it and get no value out of what its employees are doing anyway.
- It’s possible that the existence of or permission to use social software will be a help in recruiting top talent.
I’ll tackle the third point first. It may make sense that providing access to social software would tip the scales all things being equal, but, in my experience, “all things being equal” almost never happens. Salaries offered, company cultures, etc. will vary enough that the existence (or lack thereof) of social software will not be a major factor in cadidates’ decision-making (at least in the near-term).
I think the first two points are excellent. It’s like cell phones or laptops from ten to fifteen years ago. Companies then had the choice to disallow their use in-house (and of course there were all of the industrial espionage concerns when cell-phone cameras became ubiquitous a few years ago), allow use of personal devices, or provide devices and expect employees to use them to get work done. Of course there are exceptions where security is a major concern, but almost all organizations at least tolerate use of these technologies today.
A more recent and perhaps better example would be instant messaging. IM has gone from being considered a time waster to an almost mission critical tool. Many of us have a hard time imagining work without it.
So, after thinking about this more deeply, I have a better understanding of why social software in the enterprise is on the march. I don’t think companies will adopt it to appease younger workers, but instead they will adopt it to allow employees another vital avenue for creative output.
