Why Employees want Social Tools

Social technology has now become a daily routine for many people. Though this may be new from business perspective but people had already made room for these technologies in their life. However still some are fighting with internal cultural barriers, while some organizations are still working to align these social tools with business value.

In a recent study by Microsoft with 9,908 information workers in 32 countries within industries like Education, Financial services, Government, Healthcare, Information technology, Manufacturing, Telecommunications etc shows that 46% of them believe that their productivity has greatly or somewhat increased because of their social tools whereas 34% believes that their management underestimates the benefits of social tools in the workplace.

Barriers Preventing Use of Social Tools in workplace
1.Security concerns
2.Productivity loss
3.HR Concerns
4.Data Loss
5.Bandwidth

Why Employees need Social Tools
1.For communication with colleagues
2.Reviewing documents
3.Communicating with customer and clients
4.To grow professional network
5.Promoting work related initiatives
6.Finding an expert or information within their company.

With so many barriers still 28% agreed that their co- workers have ignored their organization‘s IT policy and install social tools on their work computers or work phones whereas 33% are willing to spend their own money on a new tools at their workplace to increase their productivity. 

These needs of employees are hardly a threat for a company. Such social tools also help management in searching better hires, improve internal communication and turn employees into brand ambassadors. A recent McKinsey report estimated that more effective use of social technologies in many of these same ways could unlock $1.3 trillion in value for businesses.