Social networking at work is being championed by bosses

Facebook friends with your boss? Snapchatting your colleagues during work hours? Online chatting at work is getting the thumbs up from bosses.

This type of office-based social networking is growing in popularity as a way of escaping the oppression of corporate email, so much so that businesses wishing to consolidate internal communications are turning to chat apps like Chatter and Yammer, as well as Facebook.

The market for enterprise social software, will be worth more than $8bn (£5.3bn) by 2019, up from about $5bn now, according to research firm Markets and Markets.

In January 2015, Facebook unveiled its new business networking platform, ‘Facebook at Work’ and just launched an associated chat client, Work Chat. They have signed up around 300 companies of varying sizes, including big names Heineken and the Royal Bank of Scotland, who announced in October that following a successful pilot programme it will be rolling out the new platform to all 100,000 employees in 2016.

Kevin Hanley, head of design at RBS says it’s all about facilitating collaboration between different arms of the business. Facebook at Work is “a key component in driving a more transparent, engaged, collaborative, culture,” he says.

Julien Codorniou, Facebook’s director of global platform partnerships says the platform is a tool that drives productivity.

“We fundamentally believe that a connected workplace is a more productive workplace. We want to connect three billion employees worldwide. All you need is a phone.

“We are giving everyone a voice.”

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