By Mike Pappas
Well, I’ve been a little busy. I have been testing the social media concepts outlined in my first blog and have some things to report.
The biggest issue I ran into is that many companies have policies regarding the use of social media software from the office. For all of the right reasons, many companies prohibit use by employees so that the employee is not spending his or her day on Facebook or Twitter talking to their spouse or family when they are billing to a project. So, getting permission to be connected is certainly an issue. There are ways to deal with the issue, some of which I will outline in the conclusion to this posting.
Quickly, here are some social media tools and how they fared in my first attempt. I divide them into passive -meaning things are posted and await participation by others, and active - where the participant is immediately informed that a communication need is active and live.
As you could imagine, active has its benefits, but also a couple pit falls.
Facebook: Facebook is a passive tool. Things are posted more as a ‘…hey, look at me, I need to talk to you when you are ready, here is the problem…’ type of tool. This could be very useful if a number of people need to participate and there are photos that all must review to be informed. Again this has uses if timely responses are not necessary. Post today and wait a few days for everyone to responds.
Tweets: Tweeting is passive as well, though with smart phones, people who are connected will be beeped that there is an incoming communication on both Facebook and their Tweet page. Communication will be back and forth and can be relatively immediate. Therefore, this is a tool, that if used when other participants are connected, could help resolve issues while on the site for a construction meeting.
Texting: This is a more immediate tool, typically texts are a back and forth communication tool. I have never attempted to include photos from the job site though I have done so in personal communications, so it would work though I did not test it for this effort.
Facetime: This is a fully active tool and incredibly useful for site work. I was completely unaware of this software until I purchased my new iPhone. This tool is like a phone call with a live recorder feed. The new 4G phones allow the caller to either look toward themselves or away from themselves like a conventional video recorder. This is incredibly useful when on a site trying to explain to someone in an office what they are looking at. The only drawback is that it is not available at this time on PC… but if you have a Mac iPad or Notebook, you are good to go with an app called ‘fring’. I haven’t used it though it is discussed on numerous blogs. I don’t have an iPad or Notebook.
Skype: This is also a fully active tool. Just like Facetime, it allows you to communicate like a phone call with video. I have Skype loaded as an app on my phone, though I haven’t used it to date. I have a friend deployed overseas and will attempt using this once he is situated at a permanent base, just to see how well it works on my iPhone.
Conclusion: The biggest roadblock to using these softwares is company support. It is difficult for companies, particularly in these trying fiscal times, to justify employees having these softwares on their company PC’s with the risk of having employees communicate with family and friends when they should be working. There are a number of ways to get around this, a company could start a new section of their company Facebook or tweet page. Tweeting and texting occur in offices anyway and an individual could ask other teammates if they had their own social media on their personal phone and if it would be acceptable to communicate using that tool if a problem arose on site that could be handled using a phone.
Finally, one aspect I touched upon in my previous blog post, is liability. Sometimes answers deserve more consideration than what Facetime or Skype would provide, putting site personnel in a position where they could be compromised by trying too hard to solve the problem. The site employee must have the experience to discern the difference.
To sum up this blog, there is certainly a role for both passive and active format communication tools in offices. There are ways around the liability issues, we have no choice but to find a way or continue to marginalize the difference we make for both our companies and our clients. So many people use these social media networks today that implementation will occur in the very near future one way or another. It would be best for companies to see social media for what it is. Like BIM, it is another tool to make the design team more efficient, effective and, maybe more importantly, more relevant.
Comments