Companies are wasting their time blocking staff from accessing their favourite sites. Most staff now have web-enabled smartphones so they can access them easily on their own terms. The increase in social media sites and networks means that staff now have access to communications platforms, which are in most cases likely to be better than those offered by their own companies. As more younger employees enter the company with their iPhones this trend will be exacerbated.

People are becoming increasingly used to sharing and collaborating outside the workplace, and are therefore expecting companies to be more open and collaborative too.

Most companies are organised into silos, which make it very hard for people to share information beyond people they work closely with. And the fact that many companies are expanding globally means in practice you often end up getting people isolated in small groups, run by managers who are focused only on their own patch. The result is that valuable information, insights and ideas are not shared, and a lot of work is duplicated.

There are a lot of hurdles before social networking internally enters the mainstream. Managers are worried about what kind of information that staff might broadcast internally. Managers worry that they will lose control. But it is often the case that fresh ideas and insights, or information about potential threats, come from informal contacts, rather than from formal meetings. Also a lot of IT systems are geared towards keeping companies in silos, rather than building bridges between different departments.

Social networks can be a great way to free up ideas and knowlege in more dynamic ways. Rather than fretting about what staff might say about the company on Facebook, companies will probably benefit if they enable people to use these tools internally to do their jobs and work together in teams. Providing a company creates clear goals, clear rules of engagement and the right kind of trusting online culture, internal social networks could become an excellent way to generate ideas and improve productivity.