ESN + DW = ?

Although social media has been around since the mid 1990’s, the social networking sites and online concept didn’t start taking shape until mid 2000.  Since then growing by leaps and bounds, breaking into the professional communication landscapes with the introduction of enterprise social networks (ESN). According to Gartner by 2016, 50 percent of large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks and in 2017, the majority of all new user-facing applications will exhibit gamified-social-mobile fusion — learn more about gamification and how it applies to social business.

Here’s an excerpt from banking technology, Making ‘social’ communication pay:

“The answer is to create social intranets, people portals where people can communicate, employees can be trained, customers can create communities, and like-minded individuals can form groups and turn their ideas into action,” he said. “In Jive you can mark discussion threads as decision threads. You can also measure the impact of collaboration in the system – you can see who read it, who responded, did they add a comment. You can see exactly the impact that the interaction had. It’s all about measurable results.”

With the increased awareness and research being invested into the new way to work and colloborate by introducing the social platforms sooner than later will definitely pave the way to the entry into the digital workforce (DW). The Digital Workplace Funamentals: the integrated approach report, not only introduces initiatives but also provides examples of leading organizations on this trajectory such as Unilever, The US Patent and Trademark Office, Stora Enso and Wiltshire Council.

With all this in mind, one can only wonder where will we be in 2017?  As I reflect on the past and how technology impacted my life, I can’t believe that it was only 13 years ago that I received my first cell phone, then shortly thereafter a smartphone that literally never leaves my side! By adopting ESN and moving toward a digital workforce, I can only imagine how technology will reshape not only business models, but also cultures and mindsets. What do you think?