Enterprise Social Network : Unifying Teams and Streamlining Communication Effortlessly

With the business landscape evolving rapidly, new and innovative ways of employee communication and collaboration at the workplace have become necessary to keep pace with the ever-growing world of social media.

Enterprise social networking (ESN) is an excellent solution to achieve this as it enables employees and team environments to stay competitive and collaborative while maintaining relevance in today’s socially connected world.

Bringing the power of social networks into the workplace, ESN helps increase business value through seamless collaboration and communication.

In this post, we’ll explore key benefits, features, and best practices for implementing Enterprise Social Networks (ESN). Read on!

Understanding Enterprise Social Network (ESN)

Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) refer to the online communities created by organizations internally. They are similar to a company’s social media platform, where staff and employees can communicate and collaborate via social feeds, discussion threads, and post-interactions. 

Put simply, ESN is defined as the way organizations use social networking and similar technologies to connect employees and business processes.

Apart from the above, enterprise social networks can also include various spaces where employees can create a comprehensive knowledge base in the form of Wikipedias and blog posts in their respective areas of expertise. 

Users can also invite specific individuals or groups to contribute and share in the discussions when necessary. 

ESNs, such as internal communication tools or software, make collaboration much simpler and easier, especially when the organization has a distributed workforce, with some team members working remotely and others from the company’s offices. 

They typically include the following elements:

• Instant messaging
• Project management
• Collaboration tools
• Task management

It is important to note that all the above-said elements are included in the same communication platform. This makes an ESN the right medium for encouraging team members to communicate as well as collaborate across silos. It, in turn, leads to a higher level of employee engagement and more creative knowledge/ idea-sharing. 

Difference Between Enterprise Social Networks And Social Media

Most ESN platforms today are cloud-based, which means that employees can simply log in and access them on the go. These platforms are excellent for remote or hybrid teams that need constant access to team communication wherever they are.

So what’s the difference between ESNs and typical social media platforms, you wonder?

With more than 5.07 billion people globally using Facebook, Instagram, and other similar platforms, traditional social media channels need no introduction today. Enterprise social networks are quite similar to traditional social media platforms, except that they’re specific to one particular organization.

However, while traditional platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn let users connect and communicate with anyone, an ESN offers a completely secure and specific space for your organization’s employees.

Why do Organizations Need Enterprise Social Networks?

There are several reasons why organizations need to use ESN tools. Some of these are discussed below-

1. Efficient Communication

The most important reason organizations need ESNs is to streamline communication between peers and coworkers by replacing long, cumbersome email threads with either public or private communication channels.

Likewise, employees can track conversations and ensure that they stay updated on the latest happenings without missing any crucial details.

In addition, the ESN technology makes company directories much more accessible. This means that employees don’t need to spend much time looking for email addresses to send their coworkers messages. Instead, they can simply communicate with their colleagues in real-time.

2. Centralized Collaboration

ESNs simplify centralized collaboration by storing all the company’s project data, shared documents, and task assignments in one single platform so that employees can easily track projects. This, in turn, makes it easier for teams to collaborate regardless of their location. 

A good ESN is a robust communication network that allows all employees to collaborate in real-time. It improves overall employee morale and fosters a sense of belonging in them.

3. Higher Productivity

ESN tools lead to higher business productivity with better communication, knowledge access, and collaboration. It allows employees to have easy and faster access to the information, resources, and people that help them do their job better.

A recent study also found that the employees who used internal social tools similar to ESNs were almost 31% more likely to find coworkers and peers with the expertise required to meet job goals and 88% more likely to identify the people who could put them in contact with the right experts with great accuracy.

4. Leads to Effective Remote Work

The importance and usefulness of social software for businesses to improve collaboration and communication are well known. However, these tools are equally useful for remote or blended working.

For instance, ESNs make it much simpler and easier for employees to communicate, irrespective of where they are located in the world.

Likewise, ESN allows remote businesses to replicate the sense of community similar to an office environment, ensuring remote employees feel they belong and are an essential part of your team.

Other Benefits of Enterprise Social Networking

Apart from the above, enterprise social networks have several other benefits. Some of these are:

1.  Improved Employee Engagement 

An increasing number of internal communications professionals today struggle with low employee engagement due to poor internal communications campaigns. 

Data also suggests that only 36% of employees are truly engaged in the workplace, whereas 13% are more or less disengaged. One key reason for this is irrelevant content and a lack of personalization.  

Enterprise social networks allow these users to create tailored and relevant content for all users, leading to higher employee engagement and a better experience.

2.  Helps Maintain and Enhance Company Culture 

Another advantage of ESN is its role in improving and reinforcing a company’s culture, particularly for employees working in virtual or remote environments. ESNs facilitate this by helping new employees better understand the company culture, thus driving employee engagement.

Put simply, ESN leads to a more transparent, open, and inclusive culture by offering staff a way of communicating with each other at a personal level, where everyone feels seen and valued. 

3.  Team Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Another advantage of ESN is that it facilitates the easy building of comprehensive employee directories and profiles so that companies can find teams with specific skillsets, expertise, knowledge, and experience. 

This leads to improved team and cross-functional collaboration and more efficient knowledge-sharing, especially in large organizations. 

Statistics also highlight that employees leveraging social tools such as ESN at work are 31% more likely to find coworkers with the right expertise to help them with a specific job goal.

4.  Helps Remote Employees Feel Belonged

One significant advantage of enterprise social networks is for remote employees. With an increasing number of employees working remotely, organizations find it hard to keep those workers feeling heard and connected.

A recent poll also found that remote workers’ sense of connection to their organization’s mission has been steadily declining in the last few years.

With a good ESN, companies can ensure that staff working remotely come together in a more natural and authentic way, thus allowing them to foster genuine connections with each other. This helps the remote workforce feel like a valued member of the organization, regardless of their location. 

Best Practices to Maximize the Effectiveness of an ESN

Here are some of the best practices you should know to successfully implement an enterprise social media network:

1. Do a Thorough Assessment and Goal Setting

Before you implement an Enterprise Social Media platform in your organization, it is important to thoroughly evaluate your organization’s unique requirements and goals. It will help you ensure that implementing an ESN is purposeful and aligned with your organization’s goals and business strategy.

Likewise, make sure to also assess your organization’s key pain points and areas of improvement, thus ensuring a targeted and effective solution for all your needs.

2. Choosing the Right Platform

First and foremost, different enterprise social network platforms available in the market must be evaluated through a comprehensive assessment of various aspects. This will ensure that the right platform is picked that aligns with your organization’s specific needs and objectives. Some of the things to do here include-

• Conduct thorough research 
• Review features and functionalities
• Compare the features of each platform as per your defined requirements.
• Check for the platform capabilities to be customized as per the needs
• Thoroughly evaluate the security and compliance of the platform

3. Monitoring and Measuring Success

Make sure to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and also define specific KPIs aligned with organizational goals, including engagement levels, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and productivity. Some of the things you can do here include-

• Establish base metrics and measure the identified KPIs before implementing the ESN
• Develop a feedback mechanism so as to further improve the system.

Key Features of Effective ESNs

A high-quality ESN offers a wide range of features specifically designed to enhance collaboration and promote employee engagement.

1. An Activity Feed

A good ESN should have a familiar activity stream or feed to enable employees to post content with various images, videos, documents, and more. The activity feed is typically the most important aspect of the ESN, where employees can be given all the latest updates, activities, and news.

2. Directory and Profiles

An ESN should offer a comprehensive employee directory and profiles so that employees can easily learn about their co-workers, locate experts, request contact details, and more.

3. Groups and Communities 

Another feature that most ESNs have is the ability to automatically add or connect to different groups or communities. There are typically two groups here, including those based on teams, projects, etc., and the other one is more casual, focusing on employees’ personal interests so that they can connect with each other on a professional as well as social level.

4. Easy Access for Everybody

Enterprise Social Network (ESN) should facilitate easy and convenient access for all your employees without creating any digital divide. For instance, a good ESN should give easy access to everyone, including your frontline and desk-less employees, even if they don’t have corporate email identities.

5. Integration with Other Platforms

Your enterprise social network should offer easy, out-of-the-box integrations with other employee communication apps and content management systems, such as Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. 

6. Ability to Interact and Contribute

Another important feature that an ESN should offer is the ability to like, comment on, and share content, as well as useful features like #hashtags and @mentions to get the most out of the tools. These functions make it simple for employees to better engage with content and connect, fostering a more collaborative work environment. 

7. Mobile app 

An increasing number of ESNs offer a mobile app enabling users to collaborate and connect using smart devices. Since accessing social media platforms on phones is quite common these days, this helps create a better employee engagement experience for employees. 

8. Analytics 

One key feature of ESNs is their built-in analytics features, which offer admins valuable insights into how the platform is being used.

For instance, ESN can allow you to track the reach and visibility of the most important organization-wide updates, identify the content that gets more engagement, analyze it, and so on. This then allows admins to adapt the tool according to employees’ respective needs and use it accordingly.

Case Studies of Successful ESN Implementations

Here are some of the top examples of successful ESN implementation:

1.  Organizational communication platform 

An enterprise social platform (ESN) can be an important tool for corporate internal communications.

An increasing number of organizations use the ESN today to share essential organizational updates, ensuring that these messages show up directly in employees’ news feeds to enhance the overall effectiveness of organizational communication. 

2.  Yammer

Yammer is a popular enterprise social network owned by Microsoft. It allows users to chat and share content easily. The key highlight of Yammer is its Facebook-like interface, which is simple and user-friendly. It allows  employees to join specific communities to stay connected to their teams and departments

3.  Workplace from Meta

The workplace is another great example of ESN. It is a collaboration platform for businesses built by Meta. The interface of Workplace is also similar to Facebook, which allows employees to share posts, videos, photos, or links and react to them in a similar way. 

To Wrap Up

Enterprise social networking applications are excellent tools for businesses to facilitate, capture, and organize open communication and easy information sharing between individual workers and groups within an organization. 

Apart from the capabilities discussed above to support conversations and information sharing, ESNs can also help track the network of relationships between participants and deliver a personalized stream of updates about the latest events or conversations to individuals via news feeds and activity streams.

An integral part of business communication, ESN applications help people get to know each other, have open discussions, share information, and simply interact with each other, either one-to-one or as teams. 

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FAQs

What is an enterprise social network ESN used for?

ESNs are primarily used for connecting employees with each other, sharing content, and staying up to date on the latest company news.

How do enterprise social networking tools help create business value?

Enterprise Social networking tools help create business value by connecting an organization’s members through profiles, latest updates, and other notifications, similar to Facebook features but tailored to internal corporate usage.

What are the advantages of using enterprise social network tools?

Enterprise social network tools encourage users to conveniently engage in informal conversations. ESNs are very effective for communicating change in the workplace, introducing new employees to teams, and clarifying corporate policies.

What is an example of an Enterprise Social Network?

An ESN is the business equivalent of social platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn, whereas a workforce messaging tool is WhatsApp. An increasing number of organizations choose to use both types of communication and collaboration tools.