Page 90 - Harvard Business Review (November-December, 2017)

orkplaces have adopted internal

social tools—think stand-alone

technologies such as Slack,

W Yammer, and Chatter, or em-
bedded applications such as Microsoft Teams

and JIRA—at a staggering rate. In an ambitious

study of 4,200 companies, conducted by the

McKinsey Global Institute, 72% reported using
them to facilitate employee communication.

That figure grabbed our attention, so we asked

leaders of both large and small organizations for

more insight into why they were turning to social
tools and platforms. They said things like “Other

companies are, so we should too” and “That’s

what you have to do if you want to attract young

talent.” Although the bandwagon effect was not
a surprise, this was: Few of the rationales were

ILLUSTRATION BY JUAN DÍAZ-FAES

NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2017 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 119