Social media can be a valuable resource for companies, especially those with dispersed operations, by providing situational awareness, work force and facility protection, and advanced warning of potential disruptions. Harnessing social media to advance these objectives is relatively easy with the right tools, targeted collection, and analytic expertise.
Social media, even in remote corners of the world where they may be scarcer, is a valuable input into business operations. Monitoring social media can provide critical information to anticipate opportunities and to assess risks to employees, facilities, output, and markets. They can surface indicators of change and reveal the plans and intentions of groups that might adversely affect business, including competitors, suppliers, and, potentially, protestors or terrorists. And often social media can provide this information faster than ubiquitous traditional media sources.
Social media can answer vital questions such as:
- What are key segments of the local population or market saying about your company, your products, your employees, or your competitors?
- What events are likely to occur proximate to your facilities that could affect your operations or the safety of your work force?
- Which factors could affect customer demand, the reliability of your suppliers, or the dependability of infrastructure and government services?
Warning from social media of potential threats is particularly important, especially in areas with more risky environments prone to protests or violence. Monitoring the right social media platforms with effective tools can surface threats to your employees or to your facilities. Drawing on sophisticated and affordable web-scraping tools, companies big or small can set up these warning mechanisms relying on persistent monitoring and automated alerts.
In times of emergency—civil unrest or natural disasters—social media provides a critical alert and guidance vehicle. Company officials can use social media crowd sourcing to identify optimal travel routes to and from work when traditional routes become dangerous, or to advise the work force to stay home when travel is unsafe. Social media can be used to identify areas where power is out or traffic is jammed and, in a worse case, to identify relief centers when key staples and services are scarce or access is in jeopardy.
Social media is invaluable when traditional media outlets—television or radio—are down or when local authorities are controlling these media and making it difficult to obtain timely and accurate information.
Social media collection and analysis can also surface threats to your employees and their families spawned by their online presence and the image they portray. This is especially true in areas where prevailing cultural norms may differ from those of your workers and their families or where they may be targets by virtue of their nationality or beliefs.
In sum, the availability of social media information—not only in less developed areas, but especially in less developed areas—and the availability of powerful social media tools that provide persistent monitoring and automated alerts can enhance a company’s business security and work force safety at a relatively low cost.
