Why Engineers Don’t Like Company Private Social Networks?

Oleg,

Thanks for this excellent questions. 

In my view, most engineers in PLM organizations do not use social media tools of any kind today. They still use email 99% of the time. They may have a profile on Linkedin that they look at once in a while, but they do not use social networks on a daily basis. Few of them use Facebook in any consistent way, and even fewer know, use, or even appreciate what in the world you would do with Twitter.

This means that they are not very interested in an internal tool for social media. They consider that email, and maybe a basic chat tool is good enough. They do not consider the content they create for anyone other than themselves, and are not use to sharing much of anything unless coerced.

This is changing, as new engineers are hired who understand the power of social tools to support extensive collaboration on company projects. But, today most engineers do not see the value. Most managers in PLM organizations do not see the value either, and so it goes.

This has been my experience. When I teach people in my PLM certificate classes about social media, and I tell them that email is going away, and I show them the tools that are available, most of the time I get blank stares and puzzled looks. I think this will change in the future, but the majority of the people running the show are still stuck in email (heck, some of them just learned how to use email properly a few years ago, they are not yet ready to adopt a new platform for communicating).

-Jim

I would consider Enterprise Social Software (ESS) a basic application for communication & collaboration for the whole enterprise. It is not useful if it's application is restricted to engineering, because you want followers from purchasing, quality management, sales etc.. In consequence, these tools should be part of the basic desktop – not part of CAD / PLM. Of course, they should be integrated with PLM, so that you can post new CAD models, follow projects or link a discussion to a specification object.

The profile management function is critical in terms of skill management and being able to find experts. Again, this profile management is so fundamental that I would consider it as a responsibility of HR – not of CAD / PLM.

Best regards,
Jens

Jim, thanks for sharing your experience! Mine was the same – email rocks and most of the engineers don't lie the idea to share the information. What for? – this is the most typical changes. New gen will probably fix it, but the majority of engineering / manufacturing people are not there (yet). Best, Oleg

Thanks for the comment! Yes, content is VERY important, in my view. -Oleg

I've worked for both PLM and Social software companies. The bottom line is that social needs to be integrated as part of one's normal operating rhythm in order to help drive user adoption. You have to be able to link it with a real business process and/or problem for there to be value. The problem with many social tools today is that they just offer another activity stream or website you have to go to in order to join the conversation, post content, or search for content instead of actually getting work done. Most engineers I know don't have the time to go “socialize” because they are under a lot of pressure. I don't believe email is going anywhere at least for a while but I do believe that social platforms will continue to mature and add more value…they just aren't quite there yet!

Hi all, 

I think 'culture' has a lot to do with it, my experiences show that in Europe where there is a high level of engineering know how (for ships planes and cars) engineers don't want o share too much as there is a bit of  protectionism going on. Engineers here like to be the go to person and like being the holder of important information.  Whereas Korean engineers have been working very collaboratively since day one, using netsend, and all the utilities of the technology at the time to instant chat and share things with each other. And as a result if you were to survey Korean engineers you would find that more than 80% of them (as a conservative estimate) use Social networking in their private lives and at work in one way or another. There are many factors contributing to this but I have observed that problems get solved in a different way in large Korean engineering companies, and I am pretty sure that has something to do with their ability to work well together. 

Good discussion. You've touched on cultural, but not enough I think on generational. My son is studying engineering. He and his peers use social tools as second nature. They organize themselves, communicate and share information naturally with Facebook, Twitter, live voice chat, Skype, etc. As they enter the workplace won't they expect these tools to be there?

The comments are correct, those in charge today generally don't use, and therefore don't understand, these modalities. So to me the question is not if, but when these things will begin to pervade the working environment!