The explosion of social media use in the personal lives of many people has led over half of organisation to use social media tools to communicate and build communities with their employees. Cuts in local government have led to the impending closure of the network which allows people developing social media to share experiences.

A survey by global professional services company Towers Watson has found that 56 per cent  of the organisations surveyed currently use various social media tools as part of their internal communication initiatives to build communities. Responses show that  using social media in this way creates a sense that employees and leaders are in it together with sharing both the challenges and rewards of work.

The greatest use of social media is made in the areas of Instant messaging, HR or other function journal or blog and Social networks.

Nicola Cull, director, communication and change management consulting at Towers Watson said: “We believe that social media can be a great tool for communicating with employees in the workplace, By its nature, social media is designed to build communities and could help engage employees on key topics such as performance, collaboration, culture and values. As the need for global collaboration increases, we expect more companies will join those already leveraging social media to creatively communicate those messages.”

Social media is also being used increasingly across local government, but because of an unexpected cut in the budget of the Local Government Association, the Knowledge Hub, which facilitates networking on social media, as well as other topics, is to be closed down.

The Knowledge Hub brings together people with common interests and allows them to connect with each other. It also provides an information resource and a training facility.The timing of the closure is particularly unfortunate as council budgets are shrinking and there is a greater need for sharing information about cost savings and efficiency.

As well as the Social Media and Online Collaboration Group, other groups that will disappear are Product and Efficiency Exchange, Leadership Development, Customer –Led Transformation and Customer Insight.