Social media... for work!

[ndunnett]

Over the last week or so the company I work for have introduced a social media platform specifically for us to use at work to communicate/share stuff between colleagues. Most people think that it's a bit ridiculous. We are being strongly encouraged to use it though, so yesterday I uploaded a photo of a job area where we had set up sheets to prevent stuff from falling 30 m to the ground, I was somewhat taking the piss with an extra wanky one-liner for the description plus a few hash tags. Much to my surprise, one of the big wigs from corporate saw it and shared it to the company global safety share page, commending me for my efforts. Has anyone else encountered anything like this before?

[ajb]

We looked at something like that a while ago, but decided it wasn't going to be useful for us.  I think it makes more sense if you think of it like the old company newsletter or bulletin board for low-priority information, except it's more-or-less real time and anyone can contribute.  I can see some value in the sort of Facebook-style of being able to skim over what other people are doing in other parts of a company, especially in a large organization that may have entire departments you might not otherwise interact with.  It's easy to get stuck in your own silo of the company and lose any sense of how your work fits into the overall operation if you never see what other departments are doing.   

[vinicius.jlantunes]

Many companies use Yammer it seems. We have it where I work, I'm not a big into it to be honest but well, it doesn't do any harm either.

[strangersound]

Seems like an interesting idea for companies with a lot of departments that tend to lack communication. Perhaps Google should try something like this?

On a similar note, I was messing around with Linux distros and one of them had a note taking app that was based on a wiki type program. I thought this was a cool. I tend to take and write notes all the time and have notepads saved galore. But I usually just titled them by date/order I made them in and then I have a hell of a time trying to find that one note I made. So I was thinking about trying the wiki thing for note taking. Being able to use tags and cross link my notes would be helpful...if I can stick to doing it that way.

[Mechanical Menace]

Seems like an interesting idea for companies with a lot of departments that tend to lack communication. Perhaps Google should try something like this?

On a similar note, I was messing around with Linux distros and one of them had a note taking app that was based on a wiki type program.

We use a locked down wiki for this sort of thing. Certain pages can only be edited by certain users and others any user can add but not delete content, these are our version of the office bulletin board covering day to information, raised hazards etc. Another section has two copies of every page, one read only and current the other editable and WIP, not unlike an RFC in wiki format. That's pretty much our SOP handbook.

EDIT: We do of course have rather nicely bound physical copies of the current SOPs, as great as having an easily searchable version on the intranet is in some situations it's just not practical.