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SilkRoad’s “Social Media and Workplace 2012 Report” surveyed more than 1,100 employees in North America to understand how people are using social media at work to communicate and collaborate with coworkers, customers, partners, and acquaintances. 

Here are a few highlights.

Employers and Social Media

• Most companies allow some type of access to social media at work. 43% of respondents reported working in organizations in which social media access was completely open, 24% monitored access, and only 16% said access to social media was completely blocked.
• Virtually no employers are asking for social media passwords. Despite the media and political buzz around the topic, 97% of respondents said that their employer or potential employer had not yet asked employees for social media passwords.
• Companies’ efforts to guide employee use of social technology are mixed. Only 23% of respondents reported having a specific social media policy from their employers, and the same percentage reported having no policy at all. 17% of respondents said their employers had issued informal guidelines, and less than 10% of employers are offering social media training to employees.

Employees and Social Media

• Employees use mobile devices frequently during working hours to access personal social media. 60% of respondents said they check personal social media more than once a day on their mobile devices; three out of four workers check once a day or more.
• Interacting with coworkers was the primary motivator for social media engagement during the workday. 49% of respondents said that connecting with coworkers was the top reason to use social media while at work. The second and third most popular reasons were connecting with others on a fun social platform (47%) followed by connecting with customers (44%).
• Twitter is overwhelmingly the most popular social media site accessed at work.70% of respondents use Twitter, 65% use Facebook, while only 19% use corporate intranets.
• When it comes to interacting with customers through social platforms, marketers lead. Of the people who say they use social media to connect with customers, 26% are in marketing. Surprisingly, customer support and product management reported infrequent use of social media to contact customers (3.1% and 2.9% respectively).