Social Media at Work

What are the most used social media tools on the job and how can they improve your decision making? View the results of the most recent wave of the ITtoolbox/PJA Social Media Index to learn how your peers are using social media in the workplace: http://www.ittoolbox.com/da/636778.




Survey findings include:

+ Executive decision-makers spend nearly 4 hours per week on consuming and participating in social media.
+ IT decision-makers rated topic-based communities as the most important source of information through all stages of the technology purchasing process.
+ Discussion groups, peer-to-peer networks, and social networks are the most popular social media tools in terms of usage.

http://research.ittoolbox.com/surveys/survey.asp?survey=purchasing_smt_survey2&r=Blast:PJA_w2_Announce&reftrk=no

Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work

"When used long-term, Crunch Mode slows development and creates more bugs when compared with 40-hour weeks.

More than a century of studies show that long-term useful worker output is maximized near a five-day, 40-hour workweek. Productivity drops immediately upon starting overtime and continues to drop until, at approximately eight 60-hour weeks, the total work done is the same as what would have been done in eight 40-hour weeks.

In the short term, working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally drunk. Longer periods of continuous work drastically reduce cognitive function and increase the chance of catastrophic error. In both the short- and long-term, reducing sleep hours as little as one hour nightly can result in a severe decrease in cognitive ability, sometimes without workers perceiving the decrease."

http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

20 things to do on a social network in the office

"I believe that, using the collective intelligence of all people within the company should be one of the main themes in the drive for growth, efficiency and value. Actually that collective intelligence has been mostly unused to date, just lying there. Part of the answer to change that situation, is facilitating relationships and helping people connect."

http://www.shapingthoughts.com/2007/12/23/20-things-to-do-on-a-social-network-in-the-office

How One Company Is Using Wikis and Blogs to Unclog E-mail Boxes

"... As a department head, he frequently had to write e-mails updating his team on operational issues and line of business heads who were interested in ongoing IT projects. Since adopting the social software platform, those parties shouldn't expect to see e-mails from him anymore; he requires that they subscribe to his blog, where he lays it all out. "I'm getting out of the status report business," he says, chuckling."

http://www.cio.com/article/166904

Seven Reasons for Your Company to Start an Internal Blog

Proponents say an in-house blog can be like a bulletin board, communication tool and culture enhancement. Plus, it's better than tracking projects by e-mail.

1. Your enterprise e-mail applications are not easy to search.

2. Your e-mail is lost in the eye of the “cc storm.”

3. Ex-employees can take it with them.

4. Too much wasted time checking in with colleagues.

5. With blogs, the humble and the egotist both win.

6. Organizational openness and accountability.

7. People might already be using them.

http://www.cio.com/article/120301/Seven_Reasons_for_Your_Company_to_Start_an_Internal_Blog/2

Wiki at Work

"Your company is more likely to attract the brightest and keep them if its own internal communications reflect the slick, collaborative informality of Web 2.0, with its blogs, wikis and social-networking sites. So there's a good case for going with the techno-flow rather than clamping down on personal e-mail and internet use ..."

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/search/article/771021/wiki-work/