While men buy into the productivity of social media use in the workplace more than women, it’s women that actually use those tools more than their male colleagues.
A new study from Ipsos commissioned by Microsoft found that 46% of respondents believed that their work was more productive using social media tools. Breaking that down by gender, 49% of men believe they get more work done using social media, with 44% of women making the same argument.
Like any other survey sponsored by a big corporation, there’s a hidden message. In this case, Microsoft wants to push increased use of social tools in the enterprise, particularly with its stable of Yammer products, and SharePoint.
Getting social media implemented in the enterprise (or any other workplace) hasn’t been easy. Pointy-haired bosses were cited as a significant friction point on social media use in the survey: 34% of respondents blamed management for underestimating the benefits of social software in the workplace. When asked what the specific reasons why they believed social media was being restricted, men blamed security concerns and women put the finger on productivity loss.
The survey results about on the actual use of social media were interesting across the genders. Women were found to be more likely to use social media in four of the top five implementations of social media: communicating with colleagues, sharing/reviewing documents, communicating with clients and promoting a work-related initiative. Men were more likely to grow their own professional networks, the survey found.
The infographic from the survey has some other interesting pieces of data, which you can scope out below. (Watch out for that second pie chart, because either the “Other” slice is too big, or the reported 12% figure is too small.)
