\u201cGeneration Y is all about social. At the job\ninterviews, they don\u2019t ask for company car anymore. They want a bicycle, a\ntablet, and a Facebook-style collaboration tool. We can offer them bicycles and\ntablets, but how can I offer them Facebook?\u201d<\/em> This is the fear which each manager knows.\nThis is not knowing where to start when challenged with providing a modern\nworkplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On one\nside, changing the ways and means of communication and collaboration is\nrequired by a rapidly growing number of their employees (and highly educated\nemployment candidates!). On another side \u2013 challenges, and risk and governance\nissues, are righteously stated by their IT and risk departments. \u201cI want to tell my colleagues that I\u2019m going to\nthe cafeteria for a coffee!<\/em>\u201d. In the eyes of Generation Y employees, it is\na requirement, a prerequisite, if you want. This is the way of communication\nand collaboration they are used to, from their private lives. For management,\nit is a pressure to keep up with competition, and not to lose the edge. For\nrisk department, there are issues on exposing sensitive data through unknown\nchannels. \u201cHey, but you are not allowed\nto tell anybody that you are in the cafeteria because of the rule XYZ!<\/em>\u201d.\nWorker council will stress the privacy issues. And IT department just sees yet\nanother tool they need to manage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, is\nmodern workplace actually only a hype, such as \u201centerprise social\u201d or other\nsimilar hypes were in the past, a burden that companies need to endure in order\nto attract the younger population, and, if we trust to the promises, to survive\non the market? No, that is not the case. But to get there, we need to go back\nto its essence, to define the purpose, use cases, and measurable ROI (as much\nas it can be measured), before offering it to the employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have\nseen in the characteristics of the modern workplace, published in the first\narticle of this blog series, tailored information is one of the key\ncornerstones of the whole concept. Our employees do not want to have a\ncorporate newspaper \u2013 or the whole static intranet, for that matter \u2013 they want\nthe information which is relevant for them<\/strong>.\nThat relevance can be determined based on the multiple factors, which mostly\nvary from company to company, but in the most of the cases they can be boiled\ndown to four major factors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will\nbe always news which are relevant for all the employees of the corporation,\nregardless how large it is. Corporate news, important events, big deals won, such\nthe things. Every corporation needs those, but you need to keep them on a\nmanageable level. If these news overflood employees\u2019 inboxes, the whole\nplatform will become less dynamic (since this kind of news is static by\ndefinition), less interesting and \u2013 less desirable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Each\nemployee is always part of some team or department. Regardless if it is a\npermanent team, or a temporary team, information needs to circulate. Any modern\nworkplace platform nowadays must enable corporations to create information\nexchange methods between the team members, but also, to manage them, to govern\nthem, and to enable proper lifecycle for this kind of the content. This is\nespecially important for the dynamic teams with the limited lifespan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Each medium\nor large corporation knows this problem: there are people with the common\ninterests, but they are working in different teams. Maybe even in different\ncities and countries. Very often they don\u2019t even know of each other, and they\nhave never met. A classical example are developers with one special interest,\nscattered all-over the world in different departments of a global software\ncompany. Any modern workplace platform needs to take this into account, and to\nenable these people to meet each other, communicate and collaborate. This is\nhow new ideas are born and creativity is fostered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This here\nis the \u201cI want to tell my people that I\u2019m\ngoing to grab a coffee<\/em>\u201d part of the modern workplace. Even if it might\nsound the least important of all these use cases, it is actually not. In each and\nevery group of people, in every company, friendships are born, and people start\nto communicate and to interact regardless of their belonging to a team,\ndepartment or profession. You will want to support these relationships: they\nare strengthening that feeling of togetherness and company spirit, and\ngenerally contribute a lot to the loyalty of the employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the\nreal challenge for any modern workplace platform is combining all those news\nand information in a meaningful way, as well as managing information for people\nwhich belong in the multiple of these groups in the same time. Obviously, the\nkey here is maintaining clean hierarchical employee directory, proper\ninformation tagging and cataloguing, and last but not least, information\nlifecycle. <\/p>\nRelevant corporate news<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Hierarchical unit (teams, department)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Common interests<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Personal affiliation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n