High-flyers use social media at work, reports find

Mobile executives from emerging markets leading the way

Users from emerging markets are more digitally engaged

Using social media at work may still be frowned on in some firms but two separate studies released this week show that high-flyers are more likely to use social media tools for business than not.

The reports also show that ambitious executives are more likely to be using such tools on mobiles and be from developing nations, not the US or Europe.

IBM’s global study of chief HR officers found that financial outperformers, as measured by EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation), “are 57 percent more likely than underperformers to use collaborative and social networking tools to enable global teams to work more effectively together”.

The respondents said they used social tools “to enhance the effectiveness of corporate communications and learning programs and to target and recruit external candidates.”

Meanwhile, the Digital Life survey by TNS Market Research found that rapid growth markets have overtaken mature markets in terms of engaging with digital activities. For example, Egypt at 56 per cent and China at 54 per cent, have much higher levels of digital engagement than mature markets such as Japan (20 per cent), Denmark (25 per cent) or Finland (26 per cent), despite the latter having more advanced internet infrastructures.

The pattern was repeated when comparing emerging markets with the US. For example, 88 per cent of online users in China and half of those in Brazil (51 per cent) have written their own blog or forum entry, compared with only 32 per cent in the US.

One of the reasons for this is that emerging markets have skipped the fixed-line connected PC and gone straight to mobile internet access, the report says. Mobile users spend on average 3.1 hours a week on social networking sites compared with 2.2 hours on email. And respondents expect their use of social networking on mobiles to increase more than those who use PCs.

In Australia, for example, 26 per cent of respondents expect their use of social networking on a PC to increase in the next 12 months compared with 44 per cent who will be looking to their mobile to increase usage.