Companies nowadays learn to embrace the significance of intangible assets in their success as a business, one of which is the grapevine happening in cyberspace.
One of the qualities of a good corporate management is being able to make the most out of the company’s grapevine. Grapevine are more than just humors being spread around; sometimes it contains a lot of juicy ideas that may not necessarily come out from formal discussions.
Informal communication does not only exist within the four walls of the workplace. The cyberspace has provided employees an even bigger venue for informal discussions. Technology has indeed opened up so many doors for the society, especially in terms of communication processes. Before, company managers would invite their subordinates to a drink or any sport activity. They do that not merely because they want to unwind, but because they know that they could get more from their employees by being with them in a more informal setting. However, now, due to the advent of blogs, VoIP, instant messaging, wikis, social networking sites, and network CAD, managers and employees don’t necessarily have to go out to share ideas anymore.
One of the important things every company should know is that their success and competitiveness in the global scale also greatly depends on the ability of their employees to use and make the best out of all the technologies available. These technologies allow inter-company and intercultural communications. Thus, company employees can share ideas on a global scale now. In cyberspace, people could talk spontaneously without really being pressured on any output at the end of the day. They just use the conversations they get from other people to improve whatever they have.
Internal blogging, for instance, only started as employees’ way of documenting their progress with work. But since it can be accessed worldwide, employees can now enjoy the benefits of feedbacks. These feedbacks from people all over the world, with varied traditions in their companies and countries, can really contribute a lot in improving the work done. You tell the world what you’re doing, then the world tells you what you can do further. Isn’t that efficient? Of course, text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking are also other venues where spontaneous sharing of ideas can be done.
The price the company has to pay for the benefits the cyberspace provides is the lack of information control. Even if they want to, there’s really no way to control information being published in cyberspace, since “the cyberspace is everyone’s personal space.” This is one risk and fact that they should accept. Blogs can be employees’ outlet, where they can express things that they cannot really express verbally. Some limitations can be done by the management though, like having some “blog ambassadors”
Note: There is a thick line between blogs and wikis. Blogs are highly opinionated, while wikis are objective collection of information regarding different subject areas.
