Today's workers are more disconnected from the company than ever. Spread out by distance, sometimes even without an office, these workers are looking for a way to connect to their fellow workers like never before, and this is especially true for knowledge workers who frequently require contact with other employees to get their work done. In the past, when you wanted to ask an engineer about a specification, you simply walked down the hall and asked.

That type of direct access has been taken away from many employees today. And in this context, an email is so much more easily ignored, especially when you may not even know the person sending it. Maybe Enterprise collaboration tools can help employees reconnect with one another.

Traditional communications tools are not the answer

How is an employee supposed to build relationships without face-to-face contact? Traditional enterprise tools, email and phone, don't really help forge relationships the way social tools do. Email lacks a human dimension, too easily ignored. Sure you can pick up the phone, but voice mails have a similar dynamic as emails, especially when a subject expert is getting inundated with calls. Projects can suffer under the strain.

Where are the managers?

You might see this as a management problem. A recent blog post on the eCameron blog suggested that managers need to rediscover how to use their feet to manage. The writer suggested simply getting up and talking to your charges and taking the pulse of your department and your projects. It makes sense, except this isn't 1995. Today, those employees might be in another state or even another country--or they have had their building shut down and everyone telecommutes. Managers do have to shoulder some of the responsibility to undertake team building exercises in these instances, but in today's geographically dispersed world, that is not necessarily as simple as getting out of your chair.

They have to work harder to stay on top of projects and they have to make sure that there are tools in place to facilitate communication and forge relationships, beyond email and phone.

Enterprise 2.0 could help

This is where Enterprise 2.0 tools could help. I've noticed from personal experience that when I start a relationship using open web social tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, then meet someone in person, I feel a connection to that person immediately because I've already been communicating with him or her in real ways online.

Organizations can use this same concept to help the disconnected knowledge workers using Enterprise 2.0 social tools inside the firewall. As more employees work from home, they need a way to get to know their fellow workers. They require a virtual water cooler where they can formulate ideas, shoot the breeze and build relationships with one another.

These tools--whether video conferencing, micro blogging, wikis and blogs, or instant messaging--provide a way to interact with one another in real time, so that when that request to review the marketing document lands in your inbox or your project folder, you don't ignore it, because you feel the same kind of obligation to that individual that you felt when your cubicles were on the same floor and you went out to lunch together and chatted about the weekend.

It's essential, in my mind, that in the face of shifting working patterns that have a built-in disconnect and even alienation, that organizations use these tools to replace the face-to-face to contact that we took for granted not that long ago.

Enterprise 2.0 tools can only do so much. But they at least have the potential when implemented correctly to help disconnected knowledge workers make meaningful connections. And that could help organizations stay productive even when individuals may never see one another. - Ron