Why Are Employees Resistant to Using Internal Networks? A look at how to show employees that using an internal network to communicate can save them time and frustration.

Q: How do I get employees to communicate on our internal social network?

A: Good for you for adopting one of the more productive trends in intra-office collaboration, the internal social network. Closed networks, provided by Yammer, Jive, Moxie, Podio and others, offer access exclusively to a company's workers and invited outside contractors. The goal is to make it easier to search for task-related information and to make contact with colleagues who can help.

However, surveys from Forrester Research indicate that internal networks are vastly underutilized. So if there's a silver lining to your question, it's that you're not alone. To understand why and what to do about it, we sat down with Rachel Happe, co-founder of The Community Roundtable, a Boston-based organization geared toward helping business leaders manage effectively in online networked environments.