Canadian Tire gets social with Facebook at Work

Canadian Tire is the largest Canadian company and first Canadian retailer to implement Facebook at Work.

Facebook at Work, a private social network platform for companies, lets Canadian Tire’s employees collaborate with one another during work time. Bonnie Agostinho, vice-president of information technology at Canadian Tire, hopes the platform drives employee engagement and reduces email traffic within the workplace.

“Nothing is as easy to use as Facebook,” Agostinho said. “Our employees are familiar with it from personal use. You don’t need training.”

How has it helped Canadian Tire?

“Before, the call centre rep probably would have struggled with that for weeks, gone to a manager, and that manager may not have known who to go to for the answer,” Agostinho said.

With Facebook at Work, Canadian Tire claimed their employees were more engaged and willing to answer their fellow colleague’s questions online.

“We like to think of it as the primary way we’ll communicate with our employees,” she said. “The hope is that it reduces some of the email traffic.”

But there’s a catch!

The easier it is for employees to browse social media sites like Facebook, the easier it is for them to browse potential malicious websites. This not only waste work time, but it opens vulnerable security threats to the company. Thus, it is essential for organizations to monitor employee internet activities.

Within hours of implementing Facebook at Work, Canadian Tire reported over 2000 employees registered and over 300 groups created. That’s a lot of traffic.

Bandwidth monitoring has become an integral aspect of network management. Employees who upload or download large files can significantly decrease network capacity. Organizations will need to monitor offensive employees or computers with excessive traffic activity.

Facebook at Work is an excellent platform to build more collaborative and efficient workplaces. However, maintaining security and productivity in the organization is vital. After all, despite being on Facebook, employees are still “at Work”.

Blogged by Anthony Trinh

See original blog post here: http://www.currentware.com/canadian-tire-gets-social-with-facebook-at-work/

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