A recent report from Nielsen shows that Australian businesses are planning to increase their investment into social media. When asked what is driving this increase 66% of businesses indicated that social media is ‘the marketing channel we know we need to be in’. More than half (54%) indicated they used social media investment for marketing, other commonly identified applications of social media included customer relationship marketing (30%), customer service/support (30%) and public relations (30%). However, only 12% said they used social media for employee engagement.
This study also revealed that 24% of participating businesses had a social media policy and of this group 84% had such policies and guidelines to control their staff. I thought this highlighted an interesting area – there is clearly an effort made to control/manage the use of social media of staff but little effort to use it as a means of staff engagement.
While the focus seems to be squarely on using social media to engage with the people outside the organisation, there is a huge opportunity to use such platforms to engage and empower those within. Not only can the use of social media within the organisation create brand champions who actively seek to tell those outside how good their brand is, it can increase connectedness and offer a platform where everyone can be heard and everyone can share – vastly different to the top down traditional structures of internal communications.
Kieran Harrop provides a good example of how social media increased problem solving, enabled knowledge sharing and collaboration within a government department in the UK. A quick search through google or You Tube provides many more references to social media policy when compared to a small number of references to employee engagement.
Have you come across effective use of social media for employee engagement? Does your employer make use of social networking?
Well done Amity. I agree completely, Yammer is used where I work as a staff resource, but the uptake is very slow. I reckon you are absolutely right, it should be used, not only like you indicate can it provide resources amongst employees, but it could also be used as a tool to gear people up for future use outside the organisation, representing the organisation.
ReplyDeleteRoss
Interesting post Amity, I was just navigating on Telstra trying find my usage and stumbled across their staff blog and tweets. It seems they are happy for 'select' staff to be actively online and social on Telstra's behalf. I would think that this is a fine line for employers however, particularly when you consider the array of social media sites and how 'sticky' they are. Social media for the masses is generally play, not work isn't it?
ReplyDeleteSome great data and info you've included here Amity - nice work. (Make sure you move a lot of this post across to the wiki when you get a chance!).
ReplyDeleteI've found that many employers still "ban" social media in the workplace... a very narrow-minded approach. Surely encouraging employees to connect with each other and the outside world can only be a good thing?