If any of you read the Metro on your way to work this morning you may have noticed an article entitled ‘The new Social Network’ regarding the enterprising NationalField. For those of you who didn’t, the double page spread lavished praise on Edward Saatchi’s (yes, the son of Charles Saatchi) brainchild, an internal social network similar to that of Yammer and Jive. Known to some as ‘Social software’ solutions, all of the above platforms are meant to enable a set of cost reduction / productivity increase practices including ‘fewer meetings’, ‘more ideas generated’, ‘less email’ and a significantly ‘greater feeling of community’ within companies.
National Field’s home page states that their product allows for 27% fewer meetings, 32% more ideas generated, 21% less email – $2,500 (£1,600) in savings per person per year, as well as an impressive 61% greater feeling of community. Those impressive figures have led to the San Franciscan based company securing some rather large clients including the BBC, the Washing Post, CNN and none other than the Barack Obama administration.
“NationalField represents a new way of doing social in the enterprise. This is social with clear ROI.”
–Chris Hughes, co-founder, Facebook & Obama08, founder, Jumo
NationalField now also look set to help the NHS cut their costs in what is being described as a ‘long-haul project’ which will see (in time) a total of 1.3 million staff signed up to the service. Once this happens, it will be the largest private social network in the world!
Mr Saatchi believes it is important to empower staff – particularly if they don’t have the means to communicate their ideas to their superiors. He claims a quarter of British workers don’t share their ideas with their boss. ‘You shouldn’t just give up on work being meaningful. If you can create a sense of community and make people want to work, that’s a really valuable thing.’
Do you think a solution such as this could work for the company you’re at?
