Beehive links distant workers

By Brian Bergstein, Associated Press

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Steven Senne / Associated Press

IBM employees Joan Morris DiMicco and Werner Geyer appear with computer monitors that display the Beehive program. Beehive lets employees describe their expertise.

Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the watercooler.

OK, so those days aren't gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it's getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place.

Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.

You can tell just from looking at the Beehive program under development at IBM Corp. that something is different. Beehive's color scheme is bright yellow, not IBM's standard blue. The cheerfulness reflects the fact that Beehive is meant to encourage far- flung co-workers to like one another more.

Beehive is an online portal for employees to describe their expertise so that valuable knowledge doesn't get lost inside the bureaucracy.

Those kinds of tools are common, but Beehive adds an unusual dose of Facebook or MySpace. The 27,000 IBMers using Beehive can post pictures, video and one-sentence updates about themselves. They can share lists of "things I can't live without."

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive.

These tidbits, DiMicco believes, help people understand one another better. And the usual communication tools like e-mail, instant messaging, phones and even videoconferencing do only so much to fill the gap.

Cindy Pickering, the engineer overseeing Intel's internal virtual-world efforts, doubts companies will completely replace the human interaction element.

"Instead of us going out and playing softball together, now we'll just go play an (online) game? I don't know how satisfying I would find that."

Another question is whether getting distant co-workers to enjoy each other more will actually improve workplace productivity.