Sunday 25 August 2013

Social Media in companies


In our last lecture of New Communication Technologies we had a discussion on Social Media and how it has changed our lives. For me as an international student it has the same function like Skype. I can stay in contact with my friends and family and feel closer to home. Because I wrote about it a few weeks ago I want to emphasize another aspect of social media - social media in companies.

Social Media is not only becoming popular in private life (e.g. Facebook), or to find a job (e.g. LinkedIn), it is also used within big companies. The company I work for at home, Deutsche Telekom AG (a telecommunication company with more than 200,000 employees) has its own social media network called ‘TSN’ (Telekom Social Network) (Telekom Social Network, 2013). It was launched about one year ago and so far not all employees have joined, especially the older generation which is not familiar with Facebook etc. TSN has many functions within the company, I want to mention a few: first of all, you can ‘follow’ the activities of your colleagues. I guess, most interesting is to follow the management, everyone has his or her own TSN-Account, where they inform all employees about new activities or plans for the future or to comment on the press. Thus, it is easier as an employee to understand why the company behaves like it behaves, in particular related to negative critique. Another aspect is that employees can stay in touch with each other. They can see what their actual and former colleagues are doing and they can text each other. Even though this sounds like they would be disturbed from work, the opposite is happening. Most people cannot concentrate all day, with TSN they can escape their daily businesses for a few minutes. To think about something totally different helps to focus more on your task. While they are taking a break they are still dealing with topics about the enterprise. Moreover, TSN is also used for communciation within projects and some people believe that TSN will detach most e-mail communication in the future. In total, Deutsche Telekom sees Social Media within the company as an important aspect of social responsibility and wants to be a modern company.

All in all, I am convinced that not only my company, but many others, will use intern social media networks to connect to the whole enterprise and it will promote the identification with your work – at least it is doing it for me because working becomes more fun!

Sources:

Telekom Social Network, viewed on 26/08/2013 <http://www.cr-report.telekom.com/site13/telekom-social-network>

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