Well, sort of… The headline in the SDA Asia magazine reads Serena Software Adopts Facebook as Corporate Intranet, but Serena is instead formally encouraging and scheduling time for employees to use Facebook at work:
“Serena Software is breaking out of the corporate mould by announcing today that its 800 employees around the globe will participate each week in a company-wide program called
As a Serena employee myself, I can tell you that senior management was considerably more enthusiastic about Facebook than most of the employees were when we first heard about this idea. Frankly, most of us are well over 21, and most Facebook denizens look to be under 18. We're a LinkedIn crowd by nature, not a Facebook crowd.
But now that I've tried Facebook, I do some see some benefits for us as a company.
Serena has a large “virtual corporation” component — at a guess, maybe half our developers and sales people work from a home office. People in the home office don't get to share water-cooler face time with coworkers, and those of us who work in offices rarely, if ever, see the folks who work at home. Emails, WebEx presentations, and phone meetings tend to be strictly business. But with Facebook, we can actually see a face and get to know each other a little. In a way I never expected, it helps with cohesion in a virtual workplace.
Facebook is not our intranet, though. You're right about that. Confidential company information stays behind the firewall at all times.
As for LIMITING Facebook time to a MERE hour per week — you must be joking. NOBODY at Serena has that much time to spare, and the biggest complaints about Facebook Fridays are coming from folks who don't have TIME for it.
So when the CEO explicitly allocates that much time for something like this, it sends a very big signal that people are important, communication is important, and bonding within the company, however goofy that sounds, is important. Figure out the dollars if you want to see just how big a signal that is. Pick an average hourly wage rate out of thin air and multiply it by 900 employees times 48 weeks per year (to allow for vacations). The dollars involved are nontrivial, yet the CEO wants to spend them this way.
It boggles the mind. Jeremy is no ordinary CEO, that's for sure.
— Teresa Elms
Great post and insight into this unique policy at Serena! Thakns for this Teresa! It will be intersting to see how many others follow in Serena's tracks!
Regards, Toby
Toby –
I was in a session here at KMWorld led by Carmine and he referenced this post. The interesting thing is that this was linked from our network, I had seen it this morning, and of course commented on it during the presentation. To echo what Teresa said, this is an exciting direction that we're going as a company and I'm totally stoked to have leadership that embrace the future, rather than cling to the status quo, as many of the folks here are dealing with. Also, now that I've found this great Intranet resource (I'm the IT person responsible for our Intranet), I will reference it often!
Cheers –
John Beutler
Serena Software
It's a small world indeed! Thanks for the post and the comments John! Let us know how this goes at Serena… I'm sure the readers here would be fascinated by your progress! Regards, Toby
PS – Isn't it time Serena showcases its own intranet and demonstrates the power and potential of your CMS?!
posted this url at http://www.surfurls.com
This is a really interesting development, and it will be even more interesting to follow it into the future, perhaps the posters from Serena will comment on it in for us at a later date.
I think the whole social networking thing might become more insidious within the organisation via the OpenSocial API's – when you can link 'bits' of your intranet, with 'parts' of the wider web world, the the other CEO's might not stress so much about wasting time with Zombie bites and quizes !