After the revolution brought about by the use of social networks, there is more and more talk about the corporate social network. When Emails appeared some time ago, they entered organizations directly as a new means of communication by revolutionizing our daily exchanges. The impact of corporate social networks is considerable in terms of visibility, so it is notable to know about corporate social networks to better understand them and to better integrate them within your company.

What are enterprise social networks?

Enterprise social networks are cooperative solutions that connect users, whether they are within the company or external, through instant messaging, such as the Slack tool. A collaboration space also allows file sharing. Internal communication promotes the sharing of content, improving teamwork and the creation of collaborative groups. It’s their focus on users and interactions that sets them apart from traditional collaboration tools. Integrating enterprise social networks helps reduce communication problems and misunderstandings, deliver more relevant messages, faster and more distinctly. As a result, the implementation of an ESN is a communication strategy to simplify collaboration.

But forwarding messages is just another possibility offered by these social networks.

Enterprise social media users will be able to improve their team communication with new related features.

Managers can have instant access to all people in the organizational chart with an accurate overview of their functions and skills. Today, just like public social networks, you can enter all the official and unofficial information you want.

For example, you can inform your areas of non-professional concerns and encourage users to fill in their personal interests.

Data sharing has also been simplified to increase communication speed.

Within the enterprise social networking market, we can identify Microsoft’s Yammer, SalesForce’s Chatter, Google Plus, Jive, as well as French players such as BlueKiwi, YooLink Pro or JameSpot.

In addition, nearly half of the CAC 40 companies are already equipped with an enterprise social network, said Serge Louis Real del Sarte, co-founder of Easy Bourse, and according to him, in 3 years they will all be so.

1- Facilitate access to information and gain in productivity

The presence of corporate social media provides the right person, at the right time, with the right information. This speeds up the flow of communication, saves time and makes it more profitable, to increase productivity, visibility and e-reputation.

Nowadays, response time is a key success factor for a business. A complex organization of the company leads to a slowdown in the flow of internal or external information. Long response times are an obstacle to competitiveness. This observation requires the use of a social network installed within the company to further improve the management of anomalies.

The corporate social network differentiates itself thanks to a digital link to federate and motivate people. In a globalized economy, a company’s competitiveness depends on its ability to quickly mobilize its talents for sales or innovation. Optimizing people’s knowledge and acting as a network makes it possible to take advantage of growth, visible advantages and many more.

To do this, which publishers should you refer to?

The enterprise social media market is divided into three main segments.

There are:

• Enterprise social media publishers offering SaaS-based convenience.
• The so-called “generalist” software publishers offer entire functional platforms in terms of content, collaboration and enterprise social networking.
• Open source solutions are abundant, however, too often intended for computer scientists.

To get the most out of corporate social networks, choose the most suitable network for your company!

2- Build a transparent relationship with your employees

Your company must implement work tools that will innovate and transform the internal relationships between your employees. Being present on corporate social networks will allow you to get to know your interlocutors and colleagues. Today, in large or medium-sized companies, you can’t necessarily meet all the members of the team. The advantage of corporate social networks is that you will finally be able to get to know your employees in one click. Communication via corporate social networks will give the possibility to “put faces” to employees you only know by email, which helps to develop cohesion and promote satisfaction in the company. By using corporate social networks, employees get to know each other and improve the fluidity of communication.

Communication between different teams is simplified and allows collaboration. The structured nature of enterprise social networks makes it easy to find documents, divide up tasks, and cooperate on a project without email overload. All the company’s functions can benefit from it, including the HR department, for training or recruitment (for example with LinkedIn) during any work process.

In particular, “Generation Y” who are comfortable with the use of social networks and professional networks. She masters computer tools and adapts sufficiently to new applications. Indeed, installing and adapting to a good communication tool takes time, but it can then save money, develop your visibility and collaborate effectively on your image.

To convey information on an enterprise social network clearly and effectively, here are some tips:

• Use clear language without jargon
• Be specific by using examples
• Start with a hook and don’t forget to define the subject of the message to capture his attention from the first seconds of reading. Get to the heart of the matter to maximize employees’ time.
• Once the problem has been stated, the proposed solution should be explained and evaluated against other possible solutions.

3- Detect innovation and boost innovation

The corporate social network that allows, depending on the confidentiality of the teams, to discuss in areas of expertise that are not explicitly mentioned in their job descriptions. Working and exchanging will strengthen performance when carrying out tasks. The promotion of know-how offers all HR departments the opportunity to present training, or even digital training and present career developments to their employees.

By setting up a corporate social network, an HR director will determine the most relevant tasks for the employee using a schedule, for example. Therefore, the enterprise social network can reveal skills and talents without a doubt. The corporate social network is a real extension of employees’ ability to express themselves, this work tool helps to promote team spirit, creativity and innovation. Being able to organize strenuous tasks and time in one place will free up employees’ minds, allowing them to focus on tasks that require good concentration. The allocation of these resources is aimed at efficiency and progress.

A presence on corporate social networks offers you solutions that allow you to identify talent and boost your innovation:

• Define a structure of profiles to match the context of the organization and your project to easily find the right profile
• Set up a mobilization environment to complete the employee profile
• It is essential that employees fill in their information, for better efficiency and integration of the corporate social network.
• Communicate the “small victories” through the corporate social network to highlight and unite your employees!

4 Onboard your new employees

Equipped with a tool such as the enterprise social network allows newcomers to integrate very quickly, to have the spirit of the company in mind, while avoiding complex decision-making processes.

In this case, corporate social media will bring specific benefits for human resources regarding the onboarding of new employees. By using this social network, collaborating within your company will be simplified.

Sharing continuous information about updates keeps your business in the news and helps it stay ahead of market needs. This is all the more important for those who join the company. Corporate social networks are simple collaborative work tools to get to know employees, review company policy, and have easy and immediate access to tasks.

Therefore, how can you better onboard your employees through your enterprise social network?

• First of all, communicate about your company culture, show what differentiates you from competitors with messages. Then, you can organize events to bring your employees together.
• You can also organize seminars to increase specific knowledge
• You can set up satisfaction surveys to find out how employees feel or also determine the dates of group events

5 Supporting remote work

The corporate social network will act as a link between users. Employees who need to travel will be able to benefit from this tool. In the context of activities at several locations or by relying on employees who are often on the move, the corporate social network becomes a central point of exchange and improves cohesion.

In addition, many corporate social networks can be used via mobile phones, which makes it much easier to communicate and work remotely.

It is also a practical complement to other chat and videoconferencing solutions, the latter being especially undesirable and sometimes annoying for concentration in teleworking tasks. For its part, the corporate social network allows “softer” exchanges, in asynchronous mode, promoting concentration. The ability to adapt your CSR makes it possible to find a personalized business management according to needs.

Thanks to corporate social networks, you can support your employees in every phase of project creation wherever they are. Therefore, to assist your employees, it is essential to:

• Emphasize that it is possible to transfer “heavy” files to many people remotely in no time.
• Provide general access to documents for their writing
• Update the progress of work by employees, to establish remote monitoring and support via project management tools such as Trello, Monday.com, etc.
• To conclude: don’t forget the following tips to make the most of corporate social media to promote the well-being and performance of your company.
• Adjust the choice of enterprise social networks to your business and your objectives
• Spend time setting up an enterprise social network so you know which network will work best for your business
• Help your employees use corporate social networks
  • Encourage your employees to be active in their online tasks. Use corporate social networks for formal tasks, also for extra-professional tasks.

Encourage the use of corporate social networks when working from home.

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