Social Media in the workplace does not CREATE engagement, but it can enhance it, along with the level of collaboration and creativity,speed of results and communication withini your teams. See how companies have used various social tools to re-think their workplace communication
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1. Social Media and Employee Engagement
How social can lead to a more vibrant workplace
White Paper 2011
2. Acknowledgments
Impact People Practices is an HR & Business consulting firm
that will turn everything you think about people on its head. Be
prepared for innovation, new tools and a fresh approach to HR,
training, branding, leadership and employee engagement.
Christine McLeod CHRP speaks, trains and consults in the area of
Leadership & Employee Engagement
Impact People. Impact Results. Its HR of the Future.
This white paper was completed with assistance from
Lynette Sawyer, Graphic Design graphical. [email protected]
Nora Stoecker, Researcher [email protected]
For additional audio content on each slide click on speaker icon
bottom right of each slide
3. Increasing Employee Engagement with Social Media
Contents
Why care about employee engagement?
Key factors in employee engagement
How can social media enhance employee engagement?
Social media tools
How are social media tools being used?
Challenges to adopting social media tools
Corporate culture is key
Explore social media tools to increase employee engagement
Additional reading
You are a forward thinking leader and youve become comfortable with
social media tools in your personal and professional life. Your
company may be using social media tools for employee recruitment
efforts and to engage customers via external marketing
campaigns.
The question is: Are you using social media tools internally to
increase employeeengagement? To drive interaction, connection,
collaboration, innovation and conversation to new heights? Its
being done very successfully by some companies, and for good
reason. Employees respond well to social media tools when they
complement existing ways of communicating. The positive attitude
and energy from an engaged workforce results in increased
retention, improvements to the business itself, and a positive
external image.
Christine McLeod and the team at Impact People Practices have
researched and compiled this white paper for you summarizing why
and how social media tools can be used to increase employee
engagement. It is meant to stimulate thought and discussion at all
levels in your organization and give you some ideas to try
out.
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4. Why care about employee engagement?
Success results when engaged employees deliver exceptional customer
service to loyal customers who consistently choose you.
Christine McLeod, CHRP, Impact People Practices
Aon Hewitt Associates research across more than 7,000 organizations
indicates that each disengaged employee costs an organization an
average of $10,000 in profit annually.
Aon Hewitt website, 2010
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5. Key factors in employee engagement
Salary and job security are, of course, important to employees, but
more is needed to create true engagement. Factors include feeling
valued; feeling respected; feeling involved; feeling heard; feeling
well-led.
People want to be engaged. They want their work to have meaning and
their contributions to be valued and recognized. Engaged employees
enjoy what theyre doing; they find it fulfilling; the positive
attitude and energy from an engaged workforce pays dividends in
employee retention and attraction of top talent.
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6. How can social media enhance employee engagement?
How we learn, connect and collaborate outside of the workplace has
been transformed by social media. To experience that and then be
confined to traditional communication and ways of interacting via
email and meetings at work seems constricting and almost
counterintuitive.
Christine McLeod, CHRP
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7. Companies that provide access to social networking sites may
have an edge when it comes to employee engagement.
CA Magazine, Sep. 2010*
*With permission from CAmagazine, published by the Canadian
Institute of Chartered Accountants, Toronto
You cant have a vibrant social network where youre trying to get
informal conversations
going, knowledge transferred and connections made and police the
thing to death
Henneman, Workforce Management,
Mar. 2010
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8. Social media tools
A NATIONAL PUBLIC RELATIONS Inc. (NPR) (Canada) survey reported
that 88% of its respondents cited social media as the number one
trend impacting internal communications in their companies. The
survey also found that face-to-face dialogue is viewed as the most
effective way to communicate.
As youll see from some of the examples below, a number of companies
use social media tools as a way to enhance or add value to the
face-to-face experience, not replace it as some people fear.
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9. How are social media tools being used?
Following are some examples from both private industry and public
corporations that have incorporated social media into their
employee engagement efforts. The tools are home-grown and
otherwise.
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10. Blogs
a type of website consisting of short entries providing commentary
or news
American Airlines - Internal blogging on the employee portal has
generated company-wide participation. We spend a lot of time on
our
blogs talking about the enhancements that various employees have
come up with and how theyre implemented, as well as gathering
whatever other ideas employees have about how we can either improve
on those efforts or
get new ideas to improve other aspects of the customer
experience.
Source: At American Airlines, the People are the Process,
Engagement Strategies magazine, Jun/Jul 2010
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11. Internal social networking site
a website that supports a virtual community of people.
Best Buy Introduced Blue Shirt Nation (BSN), the first social
network inside Best Buy, in 2006. That evolved to a Twitter-like
application called BSN Mix. Best Buy continues to explore methods
for expanding employee
engagement.
Source: various You Tube videos on the topic Best Buy and Social
Media
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12. Online collaboration
software applications designed to encourage online discussion,
interaction and collaboration.
British Telecon - In 2009 British Telecon rolled out their
DatatoSharesocial learning platform where any employee can upload
videos and
podcasts to support their colleagues in doing a better job. The
platform was developed in response to an employee survey indicating
that 78% of responding employees preferred to learn from
colleagues. The survey was
part of an effort to develop solutions to the challenge of reducing
time-tocompetence
for employees and improving customer service.
Source: Jennings, April 2010.
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13. Online collaboration
web site that creates a single point of access to information from
multiple sources.
BNL - In 2008 BNL, a leading Italian bank, launched a large-scale
engagement initiative that included its first broad survey of
employees. In addition to various education and training
activities, the bank has also
created an online portal through which employees can access
coaching tools and documents, and participate in discussion
groups.
Source: Caye et al., Jul. 2010
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14. As these examples have demonstrated, corporations and other
organizations are using a wide range of social media tools to
increase
employee engagement. They are using the strength of these tools to
enable manager-to-employee and employee-to-employee connections, to
foster increased internal collaboration and information sharing,
and to improve communications.
So what can we conclude?
If employees want to be engaged, and if engaged employees
contribute significantly to the success of a company, and if each
disengaged employee costs a company an average $10,000 in profit
annually why are more companies and their human resources staffs
not taking full advantage of the power of social media to increase
employee engagement?
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15. Overcoming Challenges to adopting social media tools
There are many challenges, among them the need to establish a
business case or return on investment metrics, concerns about the
confidentiality and the release of sensitive information, lack of
IT support, and getting employee buy-in. (see Bridge Consulting
Report, 2009).
Having a good social media policy is key
A well-considered social media policy that incorporates
encouragement for
information sharing with reminders of appropriate use, and trusts
employees
to engage responsibly, will go a long way to alleviating some of
these concerns while also encouraging employees to
participate.
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16. Corporate culture is key
If your corporate culture inadvertently works against creativity,
innovation, and collaboration, and doesnt recognize the value of
feedback and the importance of connection to team and fellow
colleagues then social tools
alone are not going to change that.
However, just as most employees want to be engaged in their work,
we believe that most leaders also want the benefits that
creativity, innovation, and collaboration can bring to their work
environments.
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17. Explore social media tools to increaseemployee
engagement
Its worth saying again Success results when engaged employees
deliver exceptional customer service to loyal customers who
consistently choose you.
Weve shared with you some of what weve learned about why and how
social media tools can be used to increase employee
engagement.
We encourage you to explore these tools and introduce one or more
to your company.
There is brilliance within each of your employees. In person and
with social media tools, if you can tap into that brilliance, you
enable the rethinking and reshaping of how we connect with and
value PEOPLE in our organizations.
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18. You can download the full white paper for FREE on our
website at
www.impactpeoplepractices.com
19.
20. Additional Reading
Additional Reading
10 Ways to Maximize Employee Engagement. HRFocus, Aug. 2009, p.
5(1).
Employee Engagement and Social Media at Best Buy, Canadian HR
Reporter, YouTube video, Nov. 5, 2009.
Employee Engagement: Understand and Improve Productivity Drivers,
from Aon Hewitt Associates.com web page on HR Consulting Employee
Engagement, Nov. 30, 2010.
Engaged by Social Media. CA Magazine, Sep. 2010, p. 9(1).
One-Third of Companies are Troubled by Low Employee Engagement. The
Boston Consulting Group press release, Jul. 13, 2010. [new
reference]
Social Media Tips. Eastman Kodak Company, 2009.
Top Performers Reap Cost Engagement Benefits via Social Networking
Tools. Marketwire, Jul. 8, 2009.
Beehler, Brian. Transforming our Intranet. Conference Board of
Canada, Jul. 2010.
Boese, Steve. Marketing to Your Employees. HR Technology blog, Jul.
7, 2008.
Boese, Steve. Connecting. HR Technology blog, Jul. 2, 2008.
Brandel, Mary. The New Employee Connection: Social Networking
Behind the Firewall. Aug. 11, 2008.
Bridge Consulting. How Companies are Using Social Media Tools to
Build Connections, 2009.
Burns, Susan. Crossing the Chasm of Workforce Irony. Future of
Talent Institute website.
Caye, Jean-Michel, Rainer Strack, Paul Orlander et. al. Creating a
New Deal for Middle Managers: Empowering a neglected but Critical
Group. Boston Consulting Group report, Jul. 2010.
Ferdinandi, Chris. The 3 Principles of Employer Branding,
2010.
Fleet, Dave. 57 Social Media Policy Examples and Resources. Dave
Fleets website, Jul. 2010.
Henneman, Todd. Companies Making Friends with Social Media.
Workforce Management, Apr. 2010.
Henneman, Todd. Tool: Six Tips for Establishing Successful
Corporate Social Networks. Workforce Management, Mar. 2010.
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. How EMC Maintained Morale While Cutting Costs.
Bloomberg.com, Sep. 23, 2009.
Ingram, Matthew. Jive Software Wants to Be Facebook for the
Enterprise. GIGAOM, Jun. 13, 2010.
Jennings, Charles. Learning How to Switch On: Charles Jennings
examines the role of social media in engaging employees. Employee
Engagement The Daily Telegraph Supplement, Apr. 2010, p.
6(1).
Keenan Jr., William. At American Airlines, the People are the
Process. Engagement Strategies Magazine, Jun./Jul. 2010.
Keenan Jr., William. Communicate, Collaborate, Succeed: How EMC
Gives Employees a Voice. Engagement Strategies Magazine, Jun./Jul.
2010.
MacLeod, David and Nita Clarke. Engaging for Success: Enhancing
performance through employee engagement, a report to government.
2009.
McKenzie, Terry. New Challenges for Engagement: Imagine a workforce
that is more isolated, less loyal and more independent. How will
communicators help their companies win the hearts and minds of
those future employees? Communication World, May-Jun. 2010, p.
24(4).
McLeod, Christine. 10 Ways for Companies to be Cool with Social
Tools. Impact people practices blog, Oct. 18, 2010.
Naslund, Amber. Social Media from the Inside Out: Building Internal
Networks for Employees Can Improve Processes, Generate New Ideas,
and Create a Greater Sense of Community. Communication World,
Sep.-Oct. 2010.
NATIONAL Public Relations, Inc. Start the Dialogue: Employee
Engagement in Tough Times, executive summary, Jun. 2009.
Nicholson, Natasha. Original thinking: Xeroxs Kevin Warren shares
how communication has kept the company on track. Communication
World, Sep.-Oct. 2010, p. 20(6).
Pankiewicz, Mike and APA Practice Organization Staff.
IntegratingSocial Media IntoYour Organization. Good Company, Sep.
8, 2010.
Wheeler, Kevin. From Social Networks to Communities. Over the Seas
blog, Jun. 16, 2010.
World Class Benchmarking. Employee Engagement in Difficult Times.
White Paper #14.
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