Communicating in Organizations in The Digital Age PDF

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COMMUNICATING IN ORGANIZATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
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Internal communication in organizations has been significantly changing under the
influence of the latest advancements in the digital space. The term “internal communication” is
used to reflect a dialogue, a conversation, within an organization between employees and
employer and between employees and employees. Recently published research1 suggests that the
majority of companies use internal communication for a variety of purposes, including helping
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employees understand the business and providing performance information. Companies try to
make sure that employees receive information about new products, changes in the organizational
structure, and recently launched projects in a timely manner. Social media is gaining more
importance in the communication of developments.
This note examines the importance of social media used for internal purposes, provides
relevant examples from companies taking leading positions in adopting social media
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technologies, and presents an overview of the existing internal social media tools that are
commonly used in organizations.
Traditionally, internal communication includes such forms of interaction as in-person

contact, specifically town halls, staff meetings, one-on-one meetings, and print materials such as
annual reports, memos, and newsletters. The landscape of internal communication has
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substantially changed since the advent of the digital era. Today, technological or electronic tools
often are a desired choice for communicating. Forrester Research estimates that the number of
adults who telecommuted in 2009 was 34 million. This number is projected to grow to 63 million
by 2016.2 With the growing demand for reliable, interactive ways to communicate, it is no
wonder that intranet, e-mail, and social media, including video broadcasts, wikis, podcasts, and
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1
Towers Watson (originally published by Watson Wyatt Worldwide), “Capitalizing on Effective
Communication: How Courage, Innovation and Discipline Drive Business Results in Challening Times,” 2009/2010
Communication ROI Study Report, http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/670/Capitalizing%20on%20Effective
%20Communication.pdf (accessed June 20, 2012).
2
Ted Schadler, Matthew Brown, and Sara Burnes, Forrester Research, US Telecommuting Forecast, 2009 to
2016—A Digital Home Report, March 11, 2009, http://www.forrester.com/US+Telecommuting+Forecast+2009
+To+2016/fulltext/-/E-RES46635 (accessed June 20, 2012).
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This technical note was prepared by Zakhar Ivanisov (MBA ’12) and June A. West, Assistant Professor of Business
Administration. Copyright  2012 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA.
All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by
any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden
School Foundation.
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Muhammad Umer Ijaz, Other (University not listed) until Feb 2021. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright.
Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
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others, have begun to play an important role throughout organizations. “Social media certainly
isn’t a replacement for face-to-face communication, but in today’s organizations one-to-one is
often more difficult and expensive, and it’s just not as easy as it used to be to get people together
quickly and easily for a meeting,”3 says Kevin Ruck, an internal communications specialist.
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Social Media and Internal Corporate Communication
As a part of internal communication, social media, along with the electronic channel of
communication overall, has dramatically increased its importance in the last several years. More
than 40% of companies report an increase in internal social media activities. In 2010, Steve
Liguori, General Electric (GE) executive director of global marketing, wrote about GE’s
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experience in Forbes magazine:
The simple analogy for how we often used to collaborate with colleagues was a
more sophisticated version of telephone, the children’s game in which everyone
sits in a circle and one person whispers something into the ear of the person
sitting next to him and that person whispers what he hears to the next person, all
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the way around the circle. We were using PowerPoint and e-mail, but it was
typically limited to knowing only who was the best person to contact for the
necessary information or insight. Realizing we needed to enable communication
across the function to develop a marketing standard of excellence, we tried to
build a platform of our own last year.4
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GE has successfully launched MarkNet, a site employees can use to share best practices
across different businesses. The platform enables GE marketers all over the world to form
communities based on their areas of work such as innovation and market intelligence and to
receive responses from their colleagues. Liguori recalls:
…One of our teams in GE Energy in Atlanta was looking for affordable ways to
do customer research for new product introductions. A quick post on MarkNet
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returned insight and follow-ups from businesses as varied as GE Capital and

GE Healthcare and as far away as Germany and Russia.
[Another] GE business unit recently used MarkNet to crowd-source across

multiple geographic regions and businesses to complete a market study and
segmentation model, and the model saved $250,000. When we consider that our
3
Erika Lucas, “Time to Get Savvy About Social Media,” Professional Manager (November 2010): 24,
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http://www.managers.org.uk/sites/default/files/u101/ProfessionalManager_Nov10_p22-25%5B1%5D.pdf (accessed
June 25, 2012).
4
Steve Liguori, “Social Networking Breaks Down Internal Silos,” Forbes.com, July 27, 2010,
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/27/ge-twitter-facebook-marketing-engagement-cmo-network-steve-liguori.html
(accessed June 25, 2012).
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global marketing team has 30 business and subbusiness units, each with revenues
of more than $1 billion, the knowledge that MarkNet can help us implement
income-saving and income-building opportunities is huge.5
Organizations such as GE, IBM, and Booz Allen Hamilton have emerged as leaders in
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the social media arena. A great deal of communication and collaboration effort is taking place
through custom-designed electronic tools that enable smooth interaction with team members no
matter where they are located.
“My entire team is globally diverse—we are spread across North America, Asia, South
America, and Europe,” says Ethan McCarty, who heads IBM’s global digital and social strategy
team. McCarty explained:
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This means that asynchronous collaboration is the only way we can be productive.
We make liberal use of IBM’s collaboration systems—the largest and most active
community we manage is called the Digital Community of Practice; it has more
than 725 participants worldwide who share best practices in a very active
discussion board, share files, and can have immediate access to one another’s
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profiles (photo, résumé, contact details, etc.). As for my immediate team, we are
all on Sametime (instant chat, file sharing, etc.) all day. And every other week we
have a team video conference using an open-source video conferencing
application. The video conference gives us an opportunity to see one another’s
faces, which is humanizing and also demands a more complete attention (as
opposed to the multitasking one can easily fall into the habit of doing during
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conference calls). These personal interactions build trust on the team—I’ve seen it
myself and witnessed how increased trust leads to higher productivity and a team
more satisfied with its work.6
Benefits of Social Media

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Establishing social media in the workplace can bring about a number of benefits. Amber
Naslund, a communications and business strategist, outlines five of them:7
1. Internal branding: Employees represent a very powerful group of stakeholders who

requires communication of the vision and goals for the company’s brand—especially
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5
Liguori.
6
Neil Glassman, “How IBMers Use Social Media to Get Things Done—4 Examples,” SocialTimes, September
15, 2011, http://socialtimes.com/ibm-socialmedia_b78354 (accessed June 25, 2012).
7
Amber Naslund, “Social Media from the Inside Out,” Communication World 27, no. 5 (September 1, 2010):
36–39.
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since they are the ones who are going to ensure the company is moving toward that vision
through their actions and interactions with clients, suppliers, and partners.
2. Knowledge sharing and collaboration: Social media provides multiple ways to engage
employees in sharing their expertise with their colleagues. Wiki archives, video podcasts,
and blogs describing everyday challenges and important takeaways can be valuable
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resources for someone who is just joining the company. Another important characteristic
of social media is encouragement of cocreation through involvement of more employees
in discussing and building something together.
3. Network building: Building a network at work can be crucial for the success of the
company and the advancement of careers. Many top consulting firms have adopted
internal tools to connect employees to each other (e.g., to make sure someone in the
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United States can find experts in a specific field within the company around the globe).
More clients require the involvement of those experts in their projects, and social media
provides a fast way to reach out to employees in other cities and countries.
4. Idea generation: Getting quick feedback from employees working with clients directly
and changing the offering to ensure a better response is one of the benefits of using social
media internally. It is not only about doing it fast, but it is also about involving internal
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groups to brainstorm how to create a more efficient process or a better product or service.
5. The laboratory: Building a case for using social media for interacting with clients can be
difficult and costly as it is constantly changing, and few practical ways to measure ROI
for social media exist. But the internal platform can be a testing ground for external use.
It helps managers get more comfortable with the idea of social media, the new metrics
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they need to follow, and the new tools.
Today, companies use internal social media as never before, and many of them expect it
to play a crucial role in the future. Yet it comes as no surprise that many companies still have
room for improvement. Consider the following statistics from Harris Interactive and Tacit
Knowledge Systems:8
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 Regarding employee-to-employee interaction, 67% believe that colleagues can help them
do their jobs better, but 39% say that they have difficulty locating the right people.
 Only 25% of employees frequently go outside their departments to seek or share
knowledge.
 Approximately 38% of employees do not get asked for help or information.
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8
Channelship Web Agency, “Social Media for Internal Communications,” March 2010 webinar,
http://www.slideshare.net/channelship/social-media-for-internal-communications-3627264 (cites Harris Interactive
and Tacit Knowledge Systems poll, 2003).
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Understanding how to encourage more interaction could be an important step in
increasing productivity and fostering innovation within an organization. In a study on the impact
of social media, about 70% of respondents reported that social media enabled more effective
horizontal and vertical communication in their organizations.9 Walton Smith, a senior associate
with Booz Allen, says that the tools the company uses enable more people to contribute to the
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development of the business from any location regardless of how long they have been with the
company. “If I have a new consultant who is right out of college, is on the ground with one of
our clients, and sees a problem and needs to be able to reach out for assistance, [the portal gives
him or her] a voice to put that out there,” he said. “And if the consultant has an idea, it allows the
rest of the firm to vet that idea and codify it into something we can take to market.”10
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Challenges of Adopting Social Media
Despite the growing importance of social media, some companies are still behind in
adopting it throughout the organization. The major issues that companies face trying to leverage
the capabilities of social media include limited resources to implement social media and lack of
knowledge and technical capabilities (Figure 1). Too often, however, adopting social media as
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an effective tool for internal communication is not a top priority for senior management. “I had
the [top executives] in the firm saying, ‘Let us know what you need to make this successful,’”
says Smith. “That was just critical for our success.”11
Figure 1. Reasons for not implementing/expanding use of social media.

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Restrictions imposed by legal department
Lack of metrics to measure impact of social media
Lack of employee access to online social media tools
Lack of CEO or senior management support
Lack of IT support or technical capability
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Limited knowledge of social media
Limited staff/resources to implement social media
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Data source: Towers Watson.
9
INSEAD, “Use Social Media to Connect to Your…Suppliers!,” Networks & Innovation: Build Competetive
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Advantage with Social Networks (blog), February 6, 2012, http://networks-and-innovation.insead.edu/2012_02_01

_archive.html (accessed July 3, 2012).
10
Richard W. Walker, “Social-Networking Tools Fuel Collaboration,” GCN.com, June 10, 2009,
http://gcn.com/articles/2009/06/10/social-networking-tools-fuel-collaboration.aspx (accessed July 3, 2012).
11
Walker.
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Aliza Sherman, a digital strategist and social-mobile-marketing specialist, points out
another challenge associated with adopting social media in a workplace that has to do with the
overall culture of communication:
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Mandating the use of social media tools such as social network-style collaboration
and sharing applications like SocialText or Twitter-style messaging such as
Yammer won’t create social interaction. Your company needs to start with a
fundamentally communicative culture, one where open sharing and collaborating
is encouraged. Just plugging in a new collaborations or communications tool
won’t change the culture of your company.12
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Erika Lucas compares social media to the “elephant in the room.” Managers know they
need to do something but are not sure just how to go about it. Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum,
an internal communication consultancy, suggests that a good way to deal with social media is for
employees to do what they are already good at via social media. “[They] need to think about
whether they are a good writer and doing a blog will come naturally to them—or would they be
better in an online video,” she says. “It’s about choosing your format carefully and building on
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that person’s strengths.”13
Implementing new communications tools can be a difficult for employees. Once

managers determine what kind of channel and specific tool to employ (e.g., video, blogging), the
issue of having the right content becomes increasingly important. Kevin Ruck recommends
mixing work-related issues with some personal disclosures. “People are genuinely interested
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about what their colleagues do outside work, so I don’t think there’s any harm in sharing
something personal, to bring that human touch into it,” Ruck says. “That can be difficult for
managers who have tended to think it’s not something you should talk about to employees, but
it’s all part of developing that social media mindset, where the line between inform and engage is
completely blurred.”14
For those who have been successful in overcoming these challenges, the biggest
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remaining piece of the puzzle is determining how to use social media to ensure it reflects the
type of organization or industry, the mobility of the work force, and the public perception of
being innovative. Part of the task is to identify what kind of messages are suitable for
communicating via social media. Research shows that the most common topics communicated
through internal social media include community or team building, adapting to organizational
changes, sharing new ideas, and encouraging health and wellness (Figure 2).
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12
Aliza Sherman, “5 Reasons Why Corporate Social Tools Fail,” GigaOM, February 9, 2011,
http://gigaom.com/collaboration/5-reasons-why-corporate-social-tools-fail/ (accessed June 20, 2012).
13
Lucas, 25.
14
Lucas, 25.
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Figure 2. Most common topics communicated through internal social media.
Promoting risk taking
Engaging a workforce in real time
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Encouraging health and wellness
Collaborating or sharing new ideas
Adapting to organizational/HR changes
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Community or team building
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
All participants Low communication effectiveness High communication effectiveness

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With a variety of internal platforms, IBM employees find ways to discuss many of those
topics. The company boasts of having more than 17,000 internal blogs and that its 100,000
employees are using social media: IBM’s internal tool, Dogear, serves as a bookmarking
website; its Blue Twit was copied after Twitter; and its SocialBlue mimics Facebook’s
functionality. It is interesting, however, that the company does not have an official policy
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regarding the use of social media either internally or externally. The guidelines created by
employees state that IBM employees are responsible for the content they create and that they are
not allowed to share any proprietary information. IBM management not only allows social media
experiments but invests in the creation of new ones. Some of these experiments have already
become part of the IBM product portfolio and have been offered to the company’s clients.
As companies try to take advantage of the latest developments in the social media world,
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they try reaching different target audiences within their organizations with the help of social
media. As evidenced by the research, the majority of highly effective communicators are using
social media to reach telecommuters and both local and global employees (Figure 3). With the
increasing demand for timely communication and globalization processes, it comes as no
surprise that IBM—a company with more than 420,000 employees in over 170 countries, 40% of
whom work remotely, either from home or at a client site—has been a leader in developing and
adopting social media tools for its employees.
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Another group that benefits from IBM’s forefront position in the use of social media
internally is its sales force. “My team and I are leading the effort to transform our North
American sales force into “Digital Sellers” who use LinkedIn, Twitter, eContact, and Sametime
8.5.2 [IBM’s internal instant messaging system] to engage and collaborate with their clients,”
says Edward L. Linde II, senior marketing manager at IBM. Linde continued, “We are also
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leveraging Social Media to mine for sales leads from small and midsized businesses. As a
manager of 16 employees spread across the United States and Canada, I depend on Sametime
8.5.2 and IBM Connections [IBM’s enterprise social software platform] to collaborate with and
manage my team and to be a helpful, indispensable resource to break down barriers, navigate the
matrix, and to help them succeed.”15
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Figure 3. Social media reach of employee audiences, by group type.
Line management
Sales staff
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Recruits
Global employees (located in various countries)
Local employees (located in home country)
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Telecommuters
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
All participants Low communication effectiveness High communication effectiveness

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Born between 1977 and 2000, members of Generation Y are becoming empowered in the
workplace and certainly will have more demands regarding employee communication and social
media use. With about 72% of all Facebook users in the United States now 34 years old or
younger, social media is becoming the norm and a preferred method of communication for those
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beginning or about to begin their careers. This generation has grown up with Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter, and other social media tools that they use to communicate, stay in touch, and
network with people from their social circles. A study conducted by APCO Worldwide and
Gagen MacDonald suggests that 58% of employees would prefer to work at a company that uses
internal social media, and 86% would refer others to that company.16 This implies that
organizations would be missing the boat if they neglected to take advantage of the increasing
importance of social media.
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15
Glassman.
16
Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide, Internal Social Media—A Business Driver, 2012 study,
http://www.apcoworldwide.com/content/pdfs/internal-social-media-infographic.pdf (accessed June 21, 2012).
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When APCO and Gagen MacDonald asked employees what they consider to be effective
internal social media, they identified three major variables:
1. Quality of content: how “accessible, easy to find, well-integrated, accurate, reliable,

shareable, visually appealing, and valuable [the social media content is] to an employee
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and the work that he or she does”
2. Engagement and dialogue: it stresses the importance of open dialogue with employees,
active senior management presence, and the ability to provide feedback and criticism
3. Optimization: it “is targeted to particular users, makes use of trend-setting platforms, has
a committed group of ambassadors, and takes risks to try new ways to enhance the user
experience”17
Types of Social Media
Internal social networking sites

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As stated earlier, IBM’s SocialBlue18 is an example of internal social networking. IBM
says on its website, “We designed [SocialBlue] to help employees make new connections, track
current friends and coworkers, and renew contacts with people they have worked with in the
past. Over 65,000 employees joined the site, and our research focused on understanding
motivations for using the site, impact on organizational social capital, and design of incentives to
encourage participation.”19
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Internal social networking sites are used to foster communication and ensure people can
be easily found within the organization no matter where they are located. These sites also
resemble the functionality of common social networks such as Facebook and others that enable
easy adoption by employees. They also can serve as a basis for development and promotion of
other communication tools such as wikis, blogs, and podcasts.
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Podcasts
Podcasts are a way to communicate with employees via audio and video file streams. The
name “podcast” combines two terms, “broadcast” and ‘iPod,” into one word. Podcasts are files,
usually referred to as “episodes,” which can be played on iPods and are often used for
presentations or announcements. Podcasts are popular because users can listen to them anytime
from anywhere so long as the files are downloaded on a music player or computer. With certain
groups that spend a substantial amount of time outside of the office, podcasting can be handy for
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17
Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide.
18
To view IBM’s SocialBlue, see http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=1231.
19
IBM, Beehive (SocialBlue), http://researcher.ibm.com/view_project.php?id=1231 (accessed June 21, 2012).
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communicating with sales people, consultants, and others. Moreover, due to the ability of
archiving files, new hires can benefit by being able to learn the information they need by
listening to old podcasts anytime.
Businesses find podcasts especially useful when they want to add a more personal
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approach to their communication. Adam Sarner, a Gartner, Inc., analyst, says that a “[podcast] is
a more one-on-one feeling than something like a flat press release, and it can even be a bit more
conversational than a blog...It’s making a more personal connection.”20
Wikis
“A wiki is a website [that] allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web
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browser…”21 It is often used to create communities where people can produce content and share
ideas on a wide variety of topics. Wikis22 are dynamic; therefore, they are always up to date,
which makes them especially valuable in today’s fast-changing environment. Wikipedia is one of
the most well-known wikis.
Some companies started using wikis to get employees’ feedback about their work. At
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Xerox, for example, Sophie Vandebroek, the company’s CTO, encouraged researchers to
contribute their ideas about the company’s strategy: “…we created a Wiki to help articulate the
strategy that we want to execute. So it’s not top down. A lot of the brightest ideas and the best
articulations come from within.”23
Blogs
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Internal blogs are one of the most popular social media tools used by organizations
because of their simplicity and accessibility. Employees can read blogs at any time and on their
own terms. When companies have multiple blogs, they can organize them by topic, project, or
geographical location, and the blogs can be as formal or informal as the culture of the company
allows.24 Blogs promote discussions by allowing comments to be posted helping employees share
their views on an issue, discuss concerns, contribute new ideas, and voice opinions. Internal
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blogs have a number of benefits:25
20
David Claus, “The Power of the Business Podcast,” HR World, February 14, 2008, http://www.hrworld.com
/features/power-business-podcast-021408/ (accessed June 21, 2012).
21
Wikipedia, “Wiki,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki (accessed June 25, 2012).
22
To view seven examples of a wiki, see http://www.elevatorview.com/2008/01/08/7-effective-wiki-uses-and-
the-companies-that-benefit-from-them/.
23
Geoff Colvin, “Xerox’s Inventor-in-Chief,” Fortune, June 27, 2007, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune
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/fortune_archive/2007/07/09/100121735/index.htm (accessed June 25, 2012).

24
To view an example of an internal blog, see http://www.movabletype.com/showcase/case-studies/uniqlo-
case-study.html.
25
Dan Williams, “The Value of Internal Blogging (Blogging on Your Company’s Intranet)” (blog), February 9,
2012, http://badassdatascience.com/2012/02/09/the-value-of-blogging-on-intranet/ (accessed July 3, 2012).
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 Broadcasting useful insight: Business or technical knowledge shared on internal blogs
can be quickly disseminated throughout an entire company.
 Building individuals’ comfort with risk: Blogs help publicize opinions that are outside the
mainstream of the organization. Those ideas may not fall into an established category,
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and employees could find it hard to bring them up with their managers.
 Enhancing project/task clarity: Through progress reports, blogs allow employees to be on
the same page regarding the development of a project and its impact on the organization.
By communicating through blogs, managers do not push communication to their
employees, but rather they provide an opportunity for employees to access it.
 Promoting visibility: Blogs can help employees and their teams to get attention on a
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project or a task, especially if a team is working on an idea that is completely new for the
organization and will require change from the rest of the company.
Microblogging
NewsGator Technologies, a company that provides enterprise social business solutions to

corporate clients, points out the huge success of microblogging websites such as Twitter and
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potential applications for companies to internally launch microblogging:
The phenomenal growth in consumer microblogging platforms like Twitter

(which according to the Nielsen Company experienced a 1,382% year-over-year
growth in unique visitors, from 475,000 in February 2008 to 7 million in February
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2009) suggests that people are moving to rapid, anytime and anywhere,
conversational digital interactivity. As people increasingly rely on these
interactive methods outside of work, corporations are finding it imperative to
offer a similar capability—but with appropriate corporate safeguards—to their
employees as well.26
One of the benefits of microblogging is that it calls for quick response or action by
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navigating through different departments and management levels. It also helps reduce the
volume of e-mail, something that many employees find difficult to deal with.
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26
NewsGator, “Why Microblogging,” The Benefits of Microblogging in the Enterprise, February 2010, 3,
http://www.newsgator.com/Portals/0/Resources/Whitepaper-SS2007-Enterprise-Microblogging-020110.pdf
(accessed June 25, 2012).
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The following are example uses of microblogging27 within a company:28
 Sharing status updates among work groups

 Informing employees of urgent developments
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 Gathering input on a business problem
 Getting a quick answer to a customer question
 Obtaining real-time feedback on products, services, and feature ideas
 Providing live coverage of company meetings, executive presentation, and other events

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Notifying co-workers of completed tasks
 Training colleagues on the fly
 Mentoring new employees
 Creating weekly status reports
 Managing projects (e.g., reporting status, highlighting achieved milestones, updating
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deadlines, etc.)
 Locating internal experts
Social media has been gaining popularity as a communication channel at workplaces for
the last several years. With the IT advancements and increasing demands for a reliable and easy
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way to communicate, share files, exchange ideas and opinions, and disseminate information for
work-related purposes, social media is emerging as a preferred platform that can unite thousands
of people around the world. Some companies start experimenting with internal social media to
learn what works for them so that they can take advantage of possible cost savings and so
employees can contribute their insights quickly. Yet many companies still struggle with
incorporating social media due to various challenges.
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There are some social media tools available for companies today that provide the
capability to work with video and audio streams, send instant messages, and create employee
profiles. There is no doubt that the range of opportunities on how to use social media in the
workplace will expand, and as it does, it will become increasingly important to adapt to this new
form of communication to be better prepared to collaborate and communicate in today’s fast-
paced environment.
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27
To view an example of microblogging, see http://www.newsgator.com/products/social-sites-for-sharepoint-
2010/microblogging.aspx.
28
NewsGator, “Enterprise Microblogging Use Cases,” 4.

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t

Traditionally, internal communication includes such forms of interaction as in-person

returned insight and follow-ups from businesses as varied as GE Capital and

[Another] GE business unit recently used MarkNet to crowd-source across

Benefits of Social Media

1. Internal branding: Employees represent a very powerful group of stakeholders who

they need to follow, and the new tools.

Figure 1. Reasons for not implementing/expanding use of social media.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

Advantage with Social Networks (blog), February 6, 2012, http://networks-and-innovation.insead.edu/2012_02_01

Implementing new communications tools can be a difficult for employees. Once

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

All participants Low communication effectiveness High communication effectiveness

Data source: Towers Watson.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

All participants Low communication effectiveness High communication effectiveness

Data source: Towers Watson.

1. Quality of content: how “accessible, easy to find, well-integrated, accurate, reliable,

Types of Social Media

Internal social networking sites

blogs have a number of benefits:25

/fortune_archive/2007/07/09/100121735/index.htm (accessed June 25, 2012).

NewsGator Technologies, a company that provides enterprise social business solutions to

The phenomenal growth in consumer microblogging platforms like Twitter

 Sharing status updates among work groups

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