A recent survey of 323 organizations, conducted in May 2007 by i4cp (The Institute for Corporate Productivity) entitled “The Social Network Practitioner Consensus Survey,” revealed that employees are quickly gravitating toward leveraging social networks for very traditional business uses. About half (52 %) of respondents whose organizations are using social networking sites do so to keep internal staff and remote employees connected, while 47 % use the networks to connect with potential clients and to showcase their skills.
Networks are also being leveraged to raise the IQ of organizations. Over half (55 %) of those using the networks do so to share best practices with colleagues, and 49 % use them to get answers to issues they are currently facing. This is an area that experts think could help social networking really take off inside corporations.
Social networking in the workplace is the next generation of Web 2.0 tools which will increase corporate productivity by enabling:- Better alignment of the workforce
- Retention of Key personnel
- Quicker onboarding and time to productivity via an effective knowledge base
- Managing special interest and affinity groups such as Women in Leadership, Alumni Networks, and functional-based groups such as HR across a diverse organization.
The partnership between Spring Messe Management and SITEFORUM will strengthen HRM.de to be the leading German Social Networking Portal in the Human Resource Management industry, to raise the exchange of information within HR management and to increase the productivity of HR departments with specialized knowledge.
"Visitors of online portals today expect a wide range of content, networking and interactive tools that are widely embraced with Web 2.0 technology," says Alexander Petsch, the Managing Director of Spring. These Web 2.0 functions range from creating and managing member profiles to a contribution in Communities with different topics in Human Resource Management, attendance in Webcasts, ranking of content, intercommunication with other members and the support of member/affinity groups to support specialized areas of interest, participation in member surveys and discussion forums. Other features include social bookmarking, content management, targeted advertising, wikkis and blogs.
Companies are turning to providers like SITEFORUM to provide a one stop social networking and marketing platform that can help them:- Build online communities for their client base
- Create internal social networks based on special interests
- Create more intuitive marketing portals to help clients understand their clients' needs
- Create internal employee portals
"Web 2.0 and Software as a Service (SaaS) provide cost-effective solutions without the hassles of major IT and infrastructure investments,"says Juergen Schlenzig, CEO, SITEFORUM. "With both HRM.de in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and HR.com in the USA and Canada having deep knowledge and connections in the HR field, we are pleased to have both organizations as authorized partners and resellers of SITEFORUM." In addition, their social networks connect over 175,000 registered users predominately in the HR space making them collectively the largest social network for a business to business community.
The SITEFORUM Group develops and markets a premier SaaS Social Networking Portal Platform, which provides companies of any size with turnkey ready and extendable business processes as online services. To date, there are more than two million registered users worldwide.
Spring Messe Management is an organizer of specialized events for Human Resource Management in Europe as well as publisher of the journal "Personnel Manager" in Austria. Spring is also the operator of the Social Network for the Human Resource Management "HRM.de".
Contact
| SITEFORUM Europe GmbH | spring Messe Management GmbH & Co. KG |
| Dipl.-Ing. Jürgen Schlenzig | Dipl.-Betriebswirt (BA) Alexander R. Petsch |
| Beethovenstr. 58, 98529 Suhl | Güterhallenstr. 18a, 68159 Mannheim |
| TEL 03681 39400 | TEL 0621 70019-46 |
| EML info[at]siteforum.com | EML info[at]hrm.de |
