Social Media and Impact on Employee Engagement

[Judy McLeish]

I would love to hear your opinion on whether you believe that social media can be a key tool in promoting employee engagement.

[David Zinger]

Social media is going through tremendous growth.

I love the FREEness of it. My last count showed over 1700 different sites that allow you to do just about anything! We need to rethink our business models and see where we are free and where we are premium.

Mike, it was surprising to investigate a little of BrightIdea and see they did not have a free component. I think free is a way to get initial engagement.

Yet there are also many different paths and many of the "FREEs" will cease to be over time.

[Aaron Stannard]

I think letting employees blog about their work helps create engagement to some extent - it lets them earn some gratification for their work beyond what happens in the workplace. At the same time, however, as an employer it's a good idea to have a policy to let your employees know not to blog about key things, such as accidentally disclosing sensitive information.

My 2 cents

[Judy McLeish]

Aaron - I agree that companies will need strict blogging policies and frankly social networking policies to ensure that their employees don't unknowingly give away sensitive information or materials. This is absolutely critical - just like it was for email.

Thanks for your comments.

[Zane Safrit]

This may not be the direction you want to go with this conversation....but my experience with social media is it's a magnifier, an accelerant, if you will, for the current engagement level of the employees using it.

If their ecompany has created/inspired a strong engagement with their company and its goals, then a well-executed social media strategy will accelerate that engagement with another means to share their common passion. And that will be great for the company, customers, employees.

On the other hand, a social media strategy with a disengaged employee group, AT BEST, can only mask that problem before social media does what social media does and that's spread a message quickly, finding unity in a common passion.

In both examples, social media is a powerful tool to bring attention to that which A. deserves it in the first example; B. needs it in the 2nd example.

[Zane Safrit]

And here's a great post by Chris Brogan about Starting a Social Media Strategy.

[Judy McLeish]

Zane, interesting perspective. I agree with you that social media is a very powerful tool that can magnify both the good or bad within a company. Hopefully, the company is working on engaging their people before they deploy this type of strategy...

[Jo]

Hi Judy

I think social media and employee engagement go very well together and I blogged about that a few days ago on http://flowingmotion.wordpress.com {HR Managers: stepping up in the recession]. I'm happy to elaborate on social media techniques (David knows a lot more) and the underlying psychology and impact on firm competitiveness.

I think we should be wary of trying to "use" social media. Words like "tool" and "promoting" are anathema in social media. Work done at Harvard shows that as soon as brand managers try to influence a community, they attract an uproar.

The key issue is what social media tells us about the world and where it is going. To borrow a phrase from "Zephenia", every individual is at the center of their own community. This has always been so but social media facilitates the process and amplifies the effect (Jane McGonigal).

The crunch has come financially and will manifest managerially in all likelihood over the next few years (Gary Hamel). Can managers who have been brought up to believe they are the centre of the community adjust? And if they don't adjust, what will become of their organizations? There is a massive generational difference of course because of familiarity with the tools and their effects but it is not impossible (see Eric Schmidt of Google talking with Hamel on YouTube).

So social media: we are obviously used to #So.Me - we are using Ning.
Hopefully, we are at ease with people being the centre of their own community.

We need to introduce small experiments into the workplace so people can learn without undue shocks or upsets, what it means to have a connected workplace. That's my take.

PS I've seen social media used in other countries where the CEO and senior executives were totally at ease with employees saying anything they liked on the intranet (8-9 years ago now). They also played soccer against the rest of company every week despite a 20 year age gap - a self-assured lot. Not all managers have the aplomb or business knowledge to handle an open conversation with their staff. Our focus under these conditions is to coach managers and selectively support older employees who need help on the basics. From experience, it is also important to moderate age wars. A useful line is to remind older employees that they can remember what it is like to be young and the opposite is not true. And to ask younger employees to be considerate and consider what the older employee is feeling.

Hope this long reply helps.
Jo

[Jo]

I don't think I am following this thread properly but here goes with some Group News

UK Group but all invited if you are over here.
I am trying to arrange a meetup at http://mediacamplondon.pbwiki.com on Saturday 13 December. I've booked a session at the 'unconference' for noon. Registration is free. Lunch we pay for.

Of course the emphasis is on social media and engagement. Who might be able to come and any feedback?

Jo - please track to the UK wall too.

[Adam Hibbert]

On introducing social networks, I'm experimenting currently with a culture that has traditionally been hierarchical and siloed, and has a firmly stated objective to become unified, with more devolved leadership (sound familiar, anyone!?).

With cultures like this, we conclude that, given the fish rots from the head, the first hurdle to tackle is to find a way to get the big chiefs networking and collaborating ... once you've cracked that hardest of nuts, the rest of the organisation will naturally "fall in" around them.

I'll let you know how we get on!

[Polly Pearson]

At EMC, we're experiencing wonders by using social media for employee engagement. On our internal social network, we have more than 60% of the company connecting, collaborating, sharing, mentoring, and innovating. The employees have created over 160 communities dedicated to topics like Competition, Green IT, Company Culture, Social Media, Innovation, Career Paths, Product discussions -- and more, inclusive of a general place where anything goes called "Water Cooler." We're up to 4.5 million page views per month among our employees.

The social network was launched rather virally with no top down push -- only the signals of support. Increasingly, more and more execs are using the network to socialize ideas, engage on hot topics, or simply "blend in" with the sea of voices. On this last point, an employee pointed out to me an element of our design that he thought was a true asset -- the fact that when people post, you see a name and a small photo, but not a job title. This allows people to participate based on their ideas. It enables anyone to connect with anyone on an equal level.

In all, the social network has had an amazing impact and it continues to grow. It hits on every major employee satisfier -- being heard, recognized, respected, doing interesting work, operating in a trusting environment. People have made friends -- friends which cross functional silo, geographical, and rank boundaries. They support and develop one another. For example, they have mentored one another on how to start external blogs and engage on our company's behalf via tools like Twitter. Today, we have a blogging corps of over 25 employees who serve as organic brand ambassadors for our products, services, culture and more. They have even connected with our competitors via blogs and tweets -- making for dynamic industry viewing (!) and an ability to out-report the journalists.

In the last few days we realized a fellow employee at EMC was in need of a bone marrow donor. He was told that the chances of finding a match was close to zero. If he doesn't get one soon, he will die. The more connected, more familial, more friendly EMC family -- and by social networked extension, our full industry, has joined in our race to get the word out on finding the right donor match. Since Friday there have been dozens and dozens of blogs and tweets by employees around the world working to encourage and connect donors in time to save this employee. These messages have been picked up our competitors at companies such as HP, IBM, Hitachi, NetApp as well as our partners such as Cisco and Dell.

That all happened through socially networked employees who built on their relationships, which run on "business at a personal level," with one another and with the industry at large.

So, in answer to your question YES. We're doing everything one does in business in a stronger, faster, more soulful way -- and at the same time we might even manage to save a life. All through social networking.

I cover this subject quite a bit on my blog if anyone is interested. Here you can also find the story of EMC employee Nick, and learn how you might be able to help, too. http://www.pollypearson.com.

Thanks for the great question! Polly -- [e-mail].