In recent years, companies such as ATOS, IBM and ABN AMRO have made efforts to convert 'email communication' (in whole or in part) into 'digital group communication'. In almost all cases, these companies have built and deployed social platforms for the internal organization. On these platforms, employees are brought together and asked to communicate and collaborate with each other.
These are the organisations that do not regard their employees as task-related workers, but as 'human capital'. Slowly but surely, the realisation is dawning that there is much to be gained for organisations and employees on both sides. Why then does this not happen on a large scale?
Collaboration software
There are now several – mainly English-language – collaboration platforms such as Basecamp , Highrise ,list to data Yammer , Webcenter (Oracle) or Podio (Citrix). This 'collaboration software', as it is often called, is mainly used by companies that can boast a high percentage of 'digital-fähige' employees and managers from the digital vanguard.
My experience with these – generally fine – tools is that they are not suitable for people who do not belong to the digital vanguard and who do not easily learn new software. Yammer, for example, is a communication tool (compare it with Twitter) that is easy to use (although it has many more options than those generally used) but often fails due to a lack of structure. The expectation that people will 'automatically get started with it' is not always fulfilled.
There are great opportunities that are partly caused by the well-known, social public platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Because even less digital people can handle these platforms well. They hear how Twitter and Facebook have profoundly influenced the world. They have not learned to work with these platforms at work, but in society or privately. Make use of that fact.