I give workshops for the Advanced Learning Institute, a group out of Chicago who offers training, conferences and workshops on various topics. One of the workshops I give is all about social media and its impact in the workplace.
Prior to the workshop, I send out a survey to registered participants asking them about their own experience with social media, both from a work perspective and a personal perspective. I ask things like are you familiar with Facebook and use it, do you know what a blog it and how to create one, have you ever used a wiki, do you subscribe to podcasts, etc. I ask them to rate themselves on a scale to determine their level of experience: freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, teacher, principal.
I've conducted this workshop a number of times and invariably the majority of people rate themselves as freshmen and sophomores when it comes to social media with a few at the higher levels. Meaning, most folks don't think they have that much experience with or know that much about various social media tools. Which isn't surprising given the demographic make up of most of the people who are attending these sessions: most of them are at least 35 years old and it goes up from there. Those who tend to be younger than 35 rate themselves higher on the scale, maybe juniors, seniors or teachers. And a few folks, mostly IT types, rate themselves as principals.
Most interesting is the usage of social media at home vs. at work. When you look at the numbers, there's almost a 4:1 ratio of usage of social media at home as opposed to its usage at work. More people use it at home than they do at work, except in the email category. There's more email usage at work than at home, as you might expect. But every other category (blogs, wikis, podcasts, texting, LinkedIn, Facebooks, etc.) is higher on the home scale than it is on the work scale.
Slowly but surely, social media tools are making their way into Corporate America. Some companies and industries are much further along than others. And some will have to be brought along kicking and screaming before they'll participate. But the opportunity is there to make social media more pervasive in the workplace because of the widespread adoption of social media in people's personal lives.
At home, people are used to a more modern way of communicating. But when they come to work, it's still 1988 (or 1978, depending on your circumstances!).
