Archive for the ‘Employee Relations’ Category

How your Personal Branding on Social Media Affects your Recruitment Possibilities

Friday, September 11th, 2015

clip_image002If you are still under impression that only your resume and technical & communication skills are considered while recruitments, you need to revise your assumptions, especially if you are a job seeker and active on various social media platforms. Your social media activities have a major impact on your recruitment possibilities.

Gone are the days when potential recruiters would just study your resume, talk to your recommenders, test your technical skills, interview you and hire you right away. Today, as soon as you are shortlisted for a job position, your social media profiles are scrutinized to peek in your lifestyle. The practice is a convenient way to understand the candidate, his/her association with people and basic lifestyle choices.

clip_image003If a company has strict policies against internet and smartphone usage, it may want to avoid a social media addict who updates his whereabouts and activities every hour. Similarly, posts about hating Mondays and weekdays can put a negative impression about your professionalism and passion for work. The smart way to get through the social media scrutiny could be narrowing the industry you want to join, studying the basic criteria of judging a candidate’s personal branding by the firms and designing your personal branding strategy accordingly.

For a firm relying highly on LinkedIn profiles, you can keep posting your professional and academic achievements regularly and get recommendations from industry influencers. Similarly, for a marketing job or leadership position, you can voice your opinion about latest happenings regularly on Twitter, and let them know that you like getting engaged in social conversations.

clip_image005There are certain don’ts and no-no’s too that you should always take care of while posting stuff on social media. Writing a post about how you felt after a hangover, a rendezvous with local police, caste-race based comments, supporting use of abusive language, etc. are the things that might land you in trouble. What can help you authenticate your profile can be your posts and pictures of doing the tasks for the social causes that you have signed up for in your profile introduction.

You put your best step forward when you are appearing for a job interview and try to appear perfect in every aspect that you are judged upon. This is exactly why your personal brand on social media should stand a testimony for everything that you claim to be.

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Posted in Blog Content, Employee Relations, Social Media, Social Media Research, Windchimes Comm | No Comments »

Moments to Cherish!

Thursday, October 3rd, 2013

5th anniversary_WindchimesSo many new things on the block, loads of new accounts and bag full of outstanding work. This is how the year was and we hope that the forthcoming years bring in success and prosperity too. We are extremely excited! The 5th year is extremely special to us as with this new step that we take into the thrilling year ahead, we would like to thank all those who have been a part of us and have helped us make it possible. Over the last 5 years, we have had the pleasure of working with some of the amazing clients, people and partners. A lot of great things shaped our existence.

Celebrations began with super fantastic energy and enthusiasm of Mavens at Windchimes.

As a part of our celebration, an offsite trip was organized. Mavens were awarded whacky titles followed by rewards & recognition. Nimesh & Sandhya greeted everyone present there with a beautiful welcome speech and a successful smile. This marked things like, knowing each other, bonding and a quality time well spent with fellow Windchimers!

There were chimes all around in the air, of glory, success and pride. From a great event to games & pool, it was a time well spent. Everybody enjoyed to their fullest – a moment to cherish!

Blog

Click here to glance through more photographs

We now simply relate to the bamboo tree at this stage. As a Bamboo Tree is one such tree that strengthens its roots till the 5 years of its growth & grows slowly. From the 5th year it shoots up tremendously. Relating this to our step into the 5th year depicts the fact that from the day of its inception, Windchimes Communications worked on strengthening its foundation by evolving with fantastic strategies, ideas & concepts. And therefore, now it stands strongly in the Social Media World as one of the top social media agencies.

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Team Windchimes

While we rejoice this time of the year, we send out greetings and a big thank you to all for being with us, every step of the way. It wouldn’t have been possible without you! We look forward to your continuing support in times to come.

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Posted in Awards and Recognition, Blog Content, Blog Visibility, Blogs, Employee Relations, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter | No Comments »

Socializing with your employees: Part II

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Continuing from where we left of, we shall now see how social media platform can be used to improve the structure and efficiency of an organization.

Collaborating for Success

With help of any given platform, an organization can help teams work

      ● More effectively and efficiently

      ● Ensure teams have access to most accurate and up to date information

      ● Enable remote working

                IBM

Collaborative blog from IBM

This not only leads to better work output but also builds connection. When employees feel connected to their organization, a unified purpose and each other they will be more engagement and more efficiency. Also, this reduces the scope of internal crisis as most matters are resolved via two way communication over an informal discussion.

Social Brainstorming

Social Media is also budding ground for good ideas to be sowed and germinated. Once someone proposes an idea, others can contribute to it and over a healthy discussion, the idea can take shape. Since it’s available over a platform at any given time, the constrain of a brain storming session in a closed environment and in fixed time span is eliminated, thus, giving it a feel of an open session.

A spontaneous idea that leads to a thread of comments on a Facebook group may prove to be far more productive than spending hours inside a meeting room trying to solve a problem.

Peer Recognition

Another important aspect of using social media is recognizing and highlighting achievers and the ease with which they can be rewarded. Any individual when recognized in front of his/her peers feels special. Social Media is just the right place for an individual to be recognized by his organization in front of his friends and colleagues. This builds a sense of pride and also inculcates a healthy rivalry amongst the workers.

               People

Sharing profile of employees in internal communities can boost
confidence amongst employees

Getting Personal

Social media also gives big organizations the opportunity to show their human face. Wishing people on special occasion via a personal message can go a long way in building a lasting relationship which would prove very productive. This will hold well during a crisis. When you want that extra mile from employees, then as an organization, you also need to walk that extra mile.

Giving Voice

A social media strategy to handle employee grievances is an effective tool for online reputation management. While it may be difficult how an employee conveying their grievances in front of other employees can help, but it is better than them going public in front of external clients. Being heard is the first and almost entirely the most critical step in complaint resolution. A heard employee may equal to a satisfied employee.

Chain of communication

Social media tools such as blogs can be a great way of educating people about new products and giving detailed reviews. Bring in YouTube with video demonstrations of new products and you have an attentive employee set readily willing to understand and discuss new products. Make it innovative and your employees themselves will make it go viral thus not only giving the brand an internal viewership but also the possibility of garnering millions of eyeballs from external audience.

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Sharing on internal community gives a chance for employees to interact freely irrespective to their position in the ladder

Payoffs

While it may look that bringing internal communication and HR issues on social media is a risk, with organizations having to give up on lot of control, but no policing is in fact a very good method of inculcating self control and restrain.

When people know there is someone out there to listen to them, they are less disgruntle and more constructive. They may even take the effort of using their bad experience to come up with innovative solutions to tricky problems.

This is where true employee empowerment can be achieved. This will not only help you strengthen your organization but also give you the best word of mouth publicity of them all. Employee Advocacy.

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Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Applying Social Media for Recruitment

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

A Human Resource personal’s most important task is to hire best available talent for a position that will lead to substantial growth of an organization. Indirectly, the HR role becomes as significant as any other department. Earlier, industry contacts and expertise were the best methods to locate a perfect match. But today, things are a little different.

Changing Playgrounds

While contacts are still very important source for finding a key member for a team, recruiters are also looking to social media and finding success in spotting the right person to hire, regardless of the type of organization or industry they work in.

 

                    Company

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

 

Whoever you may be, a job seeker, a professional recruiter or an organization looking to hire, and wondering if social media can help you hire, the answer is Yes! International entertainment giant TiVo reported an 11 percent increase in referrals thanks to social media tools like LinkedIn. The company has also made job opportunities “portable” so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status across major social media platforms.

Improving the Game

What is more, specific job searching tools on social media platforms have also been introduced. This is just an indication of how serious this phenomenon is. TweetaJob is a tool that uses targeting technology to tweet jobs which match the location and career interests of job seekers. This comes out of the fact that just as candidates don’t want to be contacted with irrelevant positions, organizations don’t want their openings to be overwhelmed by other offerings.

 

TweetaJob

TweetaJob Tool for Twitter

 

Where to Play

While such tools are being developed across social media platforms, many recruiters struggle with the options of various social media platforms itself. Which platform to use is something everyone wants to know? While it is obvious that LinkedIn is the global playground of professional and an obvious choice for recruiters and job seekers, one cannot rule out the usage of other platforms. With social media, everyone has a particular platform that they are most similar with and vocal on. Someone on Twitter may well be as much the right choice even of s/he is not on LinkedIn.

 

                      Jobvite_social_media

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

 

Going Global

Another advantage of using social media tools is their global potential. One post can reach across the globe in matter of seconds thus giving a healthy exposure to your requirement as well as your organization. This works at two levels. First, an economical way of hiring from across the globe with proper background knowledge about the candidate. Second, the talent is rechargeable and in infinite quantity if you know where to look.

Hidden Benefits

While there are benefits of recruitment through social media which are evident, there is another benefit that comes as a part of the process. Through the usage of Social Media for recruitment, organization tends to build a better relation with people. Since it’s an interactive medium, the recruiter and the candidate engage in one on one conversation thus making it more conducive to a positive result.

Get into the Gear

It may be pointed that while the hiring manager looks for the right candidate, having the right profile too is very important. A complete profile with a display picture and all the professional details on LinkedIn acts like a digital resume open for anyone looking to hire. Similarly, a good twitter interaction can help in showing your charming personality to potential recruiters.

 

linkedin-profile

Complete Profile on LinkedIn

 

Conclusion

While it can be said that in no ways, Social Media Recruitment can be the only method of recruitment in an organization, but it can surely be one of the most viable method to contact people who can fit in to the company. In a survey conducted by us, we found that 48% of the respondents have been contacted for jobs via different social media platforms. Of these, almost all had an offer made to them via LinkedIn and few of them even had offers through Twitter and Facebook.

 

FB Poll

 

Facebook Poll (above) LinkedIn Poll (Below)

 

LinkedIN poll

 

Thus, it is safe to say that although Social Media recruitment is yet not mainstream process, it is surely gaining popularity. And no one platform can cover all the possibilities that you can avail of.

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Posted in Employee Relations, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 3

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Now that you have read part 1 and part 2 of ‘Who is afraid of social media’, hope you enjoy the last and final part of the series as much as the earlier ones.

  • ‘We don’t know if our workforce will be excited about social media’

A very valid concern. Sometime employees might just not be ready to embrace social media and its toolss. However, one needs to remember, that most of the younger workforce have already embraced social media to a large extent and the others will too, given time and encouragement.

It might make sense to start the reluctant workforce on some simple social media tools, hand hold them and provide continuous encouragement and demonstrate the value. Tough isn’t it… but who said life was easy?

Other ways to ensure participation would be to encourage top management to actively use social media and be ‘visible’ in their efforts. Develop internal ‘evangelists’ to demonstrate the benefits and spread the good word on your behalf.

Make sure any successes achieved from the use of social media are celebrated. Incentivise the use of social media internally. For e.g. reward and recognise top bloggers in the organisation. It won’t take long for others to follow and see the benefits. Promote interesting themes and spark of interesting discussions that pique the curiosity of reluctant employees.

  • ‘We don’t know if it makes business sense for us’

Defining a quantifiable value using social media is the toughest part of being a pro-social media internal communicator. The management is not interested in ‘increased dialogue’ and ‘community building’ unless there is a tangible attached. Sometimes you really need to show them the money.

To help deal with sceptical bosses you can pitch it as an inexpensive way for teams to collaborate and for cross-learning to take place. Draw attention to the fact that social media project can help achieve specific business and communication objectives.

Start with a pilot and get internal champions to participate and share their positive experiences, so you have something tangible to report back to management.

  • ‘But will we be able to measure success?’

Yes you will, provided you give it even time and effort. Help yourself by quantifying the value of social media tools that you put into use. Decide what you want to achieve and how social media is going to help the organisation.

Include well-thought out goals, build in guidelines and rules and you should be able to measure success. Gather quantitative and qualitative data to support your claims. Some things you can use to measure success are – has employee satisfaction gone up, have innovative business ideas and solutions come out of the use of social media, has employee productivity gone up, have more issues been identified and resolved due to use of social media.

Hope this will help you start on the path of using social media in your internal communication plans. Keep in mind the golden rule of communication – ‘Communicate, communicate, communicate’

Start the dialogue and keep listening to and analysing the comments. Spot opportunities within the organisation where social media could provide a good fit. Start small and learn from your mistakes. Understand management concerns and address them. And get some internal influencers on your side before you start. After all, everybody needs a little help!

Here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year!

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Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 2

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

In the second part of the series on – ‘Who is afraid of social media?’ – we continue to focus on the concerns that stop social media from playing a key role in internal communication.

  • ‘Our culture is very different’

Yes it’s true that social media works better if the organisation has a young, tech-savvy workforce with a flat structure and a democratic and open culture. But there are enough examples across the world where conservative companies with an older workforce have met with social media success. All it needs is time, patience and consistent efforts.

It is important to recognise the company culture and customise your social media plans accordingly. You might have to tweak your plans and phase out in a manner that makes it more acceptable and easier to adopt. One needs to pay heed to the fact that even if the organisation has been traditionally conservative about communication, in the future the Digitally Advanced will form the ranks and their communication needs will be better met using social media.

  • ‘What if the employees misbehave or worse leak information’

Read behind the words. Is it just another way of saying, ‘we are not ready to lose control’? The idea that employees can say what they want is often scary to most organisations. This is the biggest obstacle in the way of social media entering an organisation. Management is often scared that employees will not have the maturity to handle social media. It is often feared that employees will say the ‘wrong’ things, use bad language, insult top bosses, complain… the list is endless. There is a bigger, and maybe real, fear of information leaks taking place.

Wake up Mr Boss! Grapevine, gossip, rumour mills… call it what you like… have been around much before Web 2.0 came on the scene. Social media, at least, allows for the so called ‘unpleasant’ things to come to management’s notice than remain something that is discussed and allowed to fester around water coolers.

You have a chance to identify issues and soothe disgruntled employees, which is better than living in a Fool’s Paradise. Just because you don’t hear negative feedback from the employees, does not mean it does not exist. If not given a platform to be aired, in the long run it will be detrimental for the company.

Instead define communication guidelines that will help employees use social media better and offset the worries regarding information leaks. IBM came up with an innovative solution in this regard and created a wiki to get its employees to create social media policies themselves.

Organisations also need to keep in mind that they have employed professionals and just because communication has moved online, professionalism and basic respect will be forgotten. Most of us are already aware that inappropriate use of email in the workplace is not acceptable and the same behavioural standards will transfer to use of other Web 2.0 tools.

  • ‘Will the organisation’s productivity come down’

Another common concern is that social media will eat into the employees’ productive time. Time needs to be invested by an employee in participating in blogs, discussion forums and wikis. Is it going to keep him away from his regular job?

No it is not. Social media tools allow information and knowledge to be shared more freely in the organisation, allows for virtual meetings to take place and saves time and costs, boosts overall productivity and is a useful way to cut down on time consuming internal mail traffic. Employees are only going to read or take part in what is their area of interest.

Click here to read about the rest of the concerns that plague internal communicators.

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Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations | 3 Comments »

Who is afraid of Social Media? – Part 1

Monday, December 29th, 2008

I find most corporate communicators are wary of social media when it comes to Internal Communications. While they are more than happy to embrace social media otherwise; when it comes to marketing to the internal consumer, a very important constituency in any good communicator’s plan, they will not touch social media with a ten-foot barge pole.

Today, I will try to help you understand what stops most internal communicators from using social media to increase and strengthen relationships with their consumers – the employees.

In the old way of doing things, companies make use of intranets or websites as static tools. Employees can search and find, but have limited ability to participate and contribute. In the new way of doing things, things are interactive and collaborative and use social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs, collaborative research, discussion forums and wikis.

It is a pity that companies have failed to realise the potential of social media in internal communications given that it can significantly increase employee engagement, help start a dialogue with employees and build relations, increase collaboration and democratise the organisation in the true sense of the word.

It also helps to collect qualitative feedback and let you know what exactly is on the employee’s mind.

What are some of the common concerns existing in the mind of internal communicators regarding social media? How can they be addressed? You must wonder, what makes me an expert to answer these questions. Well not too long ago I used to have similar concerns. By virtue of having been there and done that, I think I might be able to provide some solutions.

So here goes…

To begin with one needs to understand that in any organisation two sets of people co-exist and I like to call them the Digitally Challenged (who think the scope of the Web is limited to emails and the occasional search) and the Digitally Advanced (who have grown up with the Internet and understand and harness the power of Web 2.0 tools in their daily lives).

The Digitally Challenged don’t perceive social media tools the way the Digitally Advanced do – as extensions of themselves. The latter understand well and harness fully the power of Web 2.0 in their daily lives. They like to be engaged and like to be involved, a fact that was strategically deduced and used to his advantage by Barack Obama. Most people joining the workforce today are Digitally Advanced and one needs to make an organisation ‘social media ready’ for them.

Is the reason behind the unpopularity of Social Media when it comes to Internal Communications, the fact that most decision makers are Digitally Challenged? Is it because they have got so used to a hierarchical and controlled form of communication that they are simply afraid of losing control?

Most decision makers fail to understand that today people prefer a environment where they can be heard, where they can participate, where they can act. Today’s workforce are great communicators and networkers themselves and want internal communications to mirror the same.

There are multiple concerns behind internal communicator’s apprehension towards social media, but a few common ones are:

  • ‘We simply don’t have the resources’

Most companies have concerns about overloading overworked communicators and also about the cost of implementing and running a full-fledged social media programme for their employees.

The only way to lay rest to this concern would be show management how social media tools are not only inexpensive but take very little time to set up. For an organisation, rather than worrying on the ROI in monetary terms, the focus should be on how much it can gain by harnessing the power of social media.

  • ‘We have other communication tools to focus and don’t have the time for social media’

An excuse if I have ever heard on. How can we ignore social media when we can see that Web 2.0 tools are already an integral part of the lives of the employees? Will it not make more sense to communicate to them in a manner that they understand and enjoy rather than a seldom-used-and-often-ignored Intranet?

There are many smart companies who have seen the sense, economic and otherwise, of incorporating social media tools in their communication plans. Your chances of convincing your management will significantly go up if you can show them how social media will support the business goals. Arm yourself with case studies of companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems and other Fortune 500 companies that are using social media successfully.

Look out for more such concerns and their solutions in the second part of Who is afraid of social media?.

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Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations | 3 Comments »