An engineering company called Beca has very recently begun to improve its team collaboration through the use of IT systems. More specifically, the company’s CIO Robin Johansen has become a proponent of social networking sites, claiming that they provide much-needed benefits for the company by making its employees more efficient. Interestingly enough, he encourages the use of both business-focused social networking systems such as LinkedIn as well as general-population sites such as Facebook. In addition to social networking sites, the company also uses IP-based video-conferencing which helps support the company’s use of virtual teams. Essentially, both practices are forms of e-collaboration that the company is implementing in an effort to improve team collaboration.
Implementing these practices may seem like a win-win situation but in fact, unbelievably, many CIOs try to ban social networking, claiming that it’s a waste of time. However, these forms of e-collaboration are extremely useful. They can help the company gain a competitive advantage by facilitating the sharing and flow of information. For example, Beca uses social networking as a problem-solving tool. According to Johansen, “social networking is very valuable for being able to tap into people with similar skills and ideas, and challenges... you can find people who can share with you proven techniques to solve problems”.[1] Johansen praises the technology as being very fast, low-cost, and efficient and sees it as providing benefits for everyone, especially clients who don’t have to have their time wasted while waiting for employees to reinvent the wheel. In addition, this technology is very conducive to the changing nature of work in a globalized world. Indeed, the technology helps to better unite this global company which has a lot of remote projects as well as multiple offices spread around the world. After analyzing this form of e-collaboration it soon becomes clear that the benefits heavily outweigh the costs. It’s almost safe to say that there are almost no downsides to using this technology except that workers may spend too much time socializing and may get distracted from their work as a result.
Not only is social networking a pleasant convenience, at times it becomes a necessity. Many young, talented workers use it to keep in touch with both friends and associates who work in the same discipline. The absence of social networking and consequently, the opportunities it provides colleagues to communicate with one another will be a “disincentive for young people to come into the business”.[2]
Not only should all companies encourage social networking, but they should also encourage the use of Beca’s inexpensive and easy-to-use IP-based video-conferencing. Beca has found that this e-collaboration technology is cost-efficient and environmentally conscious since it cuts back on air travel. It also improves team collaboration by helping the company deal with cultural and language issues. Indeed, video communication enables employees to better understand each other by enabling them to read each other’s body language. This technology is really useful for a company like Beca which has a diverse workforce situated in many different countries. Lastly, video communication supports virtual teams as it enables many different employees from places like
It’s quite clear that Beca’s use of such e-collaboration tools as social networking and video-conferencing is greatly improving its team collaboration, thereby increasing the organization’s productivity and helping to give it a competitive advantage by doing so.
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