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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

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.

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.

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.

Tags:blog, Collaboration, communities, Corporate Communications, Employee Relations, engagement, Human Resource, internal communication, internal communication and social media, listening
Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations, Social Media | 5 Comments »

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.

Tags:Corporate Communications, Employee Relations, internal communication, internal communication and social media, PR, Social Media, social media and employees, Social Media Marketing, Social Media tools
Posted in Corporate Communications, Employee Relations | 3 Comments »