The 3 most important words of 2013

Ringing in a New Year means new trends, policies, and exciting buzzwords. For 2013 those new trends are projected to fall around social (already big, but in this case, social business), mobile, and especially collaboration. The ability to access any website nearly anytime because of the flexibility of mobile, is raising all kinds of questions.

What happens if your company doesn’t have an app in the app store or your website isn’t ‘mobile’ compatible? Well, you are pretty much left in the dust. Mobile allows individuals to be connected twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which means businesses need to be up to speed with their consumers’ demands.

Statistics show that 64 percent of employees visit non-work related websites every day they are at the office. Social sites are the ones that keep employees off task the most so why not implement a social site that your employees and company can actually benefit from?

Enabling employees to have access to a social tool that can give them the information they need to get their job done efficiently and effectively can only benefit the company in a positive way.

Great, you have this knowledge sharing tool for your employees to collaborate on, but they only have access to it while at the office. That isn’t going to fly in today’s society. Having a smartphone attached to your hand at all times is the new social norm. You can’t go anywhere and not see someone with their head down texting, tweeting, or emailing.

One Nielson study shows 64% of mobile phone time is spent on apps. Individuals are more likely to share information with their knowledge sharing community if they have an app to do it on. Your employees need the ability to share on-the-go.

Collaboration amongst employees isn’t just a trend, or just something that HR managers are worried about, it is a real issue and companies need the right tools to encourage collaboration in the workplace.

A great way to ensure employees are fully utilizing the collaboration tool is to make sure it is available on their mobile devices. It shouldn’t be restricted to just their computer, they need the ability to share information or ask questions anywhere, anytime.

These three ‘buzzwords’ boil down to enabling a workforce to share knowledge, collaborate, and seek information while on-the-go. They shouldn’t be restricted to sharing only at their desk; they need the tools to do so on the go and in a social atmosphere. You can’t expect a workforce to be excited about outdated software. What you can expect is for them to be excited about a knowledge sharing tool for the modern workforce that incorporates the social side of learning.