Social media: new emerging benefits or concerns?

For this year’s intranet/digital workplace survey, we plan to use the list of benefits and concerns about social media that we’ve used  for the last 3 years. It makes a good benchmark for comparison as mentalities and experiences evolve.

On the other hand, maybe there are some new types of benefits? Or new emerging concerns? The items on the lists below are intended to be general, and we have open questions for more specific responses.

Are you aware of new angles we should include, things that do not fit into one of the items already on the lists below?

Anything to add to this list of “soft” benefits?

• Better informed employees
• More engaged employees
• More effective knowledge-sharing
• Increased cross pollination and  innovation
• Emergence of previously unrecognised experts

Any new emerging”hard” benefits?

• Streamlining of processes
• Decreased usage of email
• Cost reduction or avoidance
• Faster problem solving, decision-making
• Reduced time for training

Are there new concerns about information quality and security?

• Uncontrolled quality of information
• Version control of documents
• Difficulties to find information
• Security of information in highly regulated industries

…or  business and organizational value?

• Lack of relevance to business processes
• Lack or low value to the organization
• Potential waste of time by employees

… or user adoption?

• User resistance
• Creation of “age silos”
• Creation of “language silos”

Let me know if there are other items you’d like to see on the benefits and concerns questions this year.

FYI: Read about Social media challenging the intranet from last year’s survey.