My coworker and I presented a session at the Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM) Regional Conference a few weeks ago. The topic: Leveraging Social Media to Engage Employees. The thrust of our talk was that a company can engage employees throughout the employee life cycle. In order to do this, you need to understand how they consume social media and create a strategic plan based on that knowledge.
Our topic was based on feedback from human resource professionals wanting to know how to incorporate these tools into their already full internal communications day and how to encourage employee adoption and minimize CEO pushback. In all honesty, I cannot say that we converted anyone in the audience from skeptics to believers.
Key findings from the 2010 Social Media Survey conducted across internal communications practitioners globally may explain why.
- The profession is divided. Forty eight percent (48%) believe the business case for social media is “very clear” or “clear,” while 46% say it is “very unclear” or “unclear.”
- Clear signal that training is needed. More than 2/3 or all global internal communicators rate their team’s social media expertise as “very low” or “low” on average and 22% believe their team lacks the skills to make social media happen.
- Social media responsibility remains unclear. The profession is still largely undecided as to who and which departments should be responsible for its deployment with almost half (46%) unclear about the role they play.
- The majority of the companies surveyed are slow to make the cultural shift. Fifty five percent (55%) remain unconvinced are are undecided about how their organization’s culture could benefit from the use of social media.
- The majority of leaders (68.8%) prefer email and electronic newsletters to communicate to staff and employees.
One glimmer of hope is that a fair number of leaders blog regularly (24.3%), one third participate in closed company forums and Q&A sessions with employees and nearly 10% tweet updates on Twitter.
We made the case in our HR Branding: A Field Guide that having a strong internal brand helps companies recruit and retain the best, create long-term loyalty and empower your people as brand ambassadors.
Hmmmm. Sounds similar to my opening statement: Social media can engage people throughout the employee life cycle.
Perhaps if companies start looking at social media as an extension of their brand, then HR would gladly join hands with marketing and work to extend their brand message both internally and externally.
Source: Melcurm Social Media Survery 2010 – Detailed Findings, Press Release 26 May 2010.
Nicolette,
Everybody is talking about LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, XING, Plaxo, etc. and their uses for finding talent. It sometimes gives the impression that social networks are mainly for hiring (and for marketing, of course). There is very little being said about their enormous potential inside a corporation, as a way of improving employee engagement and retention.
Take a look at your company. How many employees connect among themselves in public social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn? If your company is like the ones I’ve worked for, chances are that even people who see each other every working day, sometimes in neighboring cubicles, are connecting and sharing information on these networks. What benefit does your company get out of these interactions? Probably much less than it could.
Now imagine your company had its own internal social network, where every employee could document his/her experience and working relationships, the projects they have worked in, their career interests, and their skills. Imagine all that information was searchable, like having an internal Google, and that you could filter your searches by region, office, department, etc.
Suppose every employee could send and subscribe to status updates, like Twitter, and those were also searchable. What if you could compile “tag clouds” with the most common words in these tweets, and that you were able to filter them by department and region. It would be a wonderful tool to discover what the buzz is in areas of your organization that you don’t know about.
Can you imagine how much such a tool would help in the process of integrating two different organizations after a merger or acquisition? Or how useful it would be for new hires to learn about their new workplace? It would be like having a virtual map, showing you who has the experience and the working relations to help you.
Now add the ability for people to write little snippets of praise to their colleagues (like when someone writes on your wall in Facebook, but with more control over what you show or don’t show). Wouldn’t that be an excellent and cost-effective solution to recognition problems? Just imagine: someone writes you a few sentences of recognition and you are able to prominently display them on your profile, where all your colleagues can see them. Wouldn’t that foster a culture where people felt more rewarded for their achievements? And all at virtually no cost!
My own experience is with Jouzz.com. One of the features I like most about it is that it allows our distributed international teams to participate in chat discussion groups and, if someone posts something in their own language, the others can get an automatic translation with just one mouse-click.
I think there is a lot of potential for these tools inside the enterprise. It is a pity to use social networks just for recruitment and miss out on all the other possibilities.
Eduardo,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I believe that companies who embrace social media tools internally and empower their employees to connect without too much oversight will benefit with increased employee loyalty, motivation and productivity.
I heard a report on NRP this morning that companies who have not been maintaining their internal communications will see workers leave in droves, once the economy picks up. It’s not enough to think that “you’re lucky to have a job” will resonate with skilled employees once career options open up.
The time to manage your brand, internally or externally, is before you need to.