The Inside Voice

Company Success News Can Help Fuel Employee Engagement

We're experiencing more cautious optimism about the economy these days. Positive indicators continue to surface, the market is on the upswing and the number of first-time unemployment claims dropped to the lowest level since January. I'll bet your company is experiencing some positive indicators as well. Have you shared the good news with your employees?

To better engage your employees, make sure they know of the company successes. Employees always appreciate getting the "inside scoop," and it makes them feel more a part of the company team. 

Gathering The News

Where do you start? First, identify the type of news you have to share. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Sales. Does your company have a new noteworthy or significant client, or maybe one you've been pitching for a long time? Have your sales numbers started to climb? Are you making progress toward closing a new client, such as being included in the finals of your company's ideal client? 
• New lines of business. Are you introducing a new line of business or changing an existing one that is noteworthy?
• Significant cost savings. Are you implementing a new process or program that will reduce costs and help the company's bottom line? 
• PR and awards. Has your company been in the news? Have you received an industry or civic award?

There will also be other success areas that are specific to your business that are important to your employees. Include those on your success news list as well.

Communicating The News

Once you have determined the type of news you want to share with employees, what is the right vehicle to use to tell the story? Some guidelines:

• Intranet. This should be the go-to place for all of your company's internal communications and news. If your senior management has a regular column on the intranet, include the news in that column or article. If it's a really big deal, do an additional article to trumpet the news.
• Internal blog. For companies with a blog, this is a great place to tell the news, and then listen to employee feedback. This is a great way to get employees to join the conversation and feel more a part of the company. It also allows you to monitor the level of employee excitement.
• Twitter or Yammer. If your company is already using social media for internal communications, Twitter or Yammer is a great way to blast a big news announcement. Be sure to include a link to your blog or intranet article as well so they can get the whole story.
• Staff meetings. For departments that have regular staff meetings, pointing out successes from other departments can be very effective. It allows one department to discuss what steps they need to implement to support this change. Are more staffing or realigned resources required? Getting more departments engaged in the success can help the positive progress continue.
• Email. Email is a great way to communicate, but it is often overused. To effectively use email for success announcements, don't do an email for each success, unless it's a really big success. Instead, consider doing a weekly or monthly email with several updates in it. This will help employees realize the value of each email, increasing your open rate.

As you continue to tout the success the company is having to your employees, you are engaging them in being a part of the success. And don't be surprised employees begin to provide you with new suggestions to include in your success news. 

What success news do you communicate to engage your employees in a recovering economy? Have you already implemented a renewed approach to engaging your employees now that the economy is returning? Click on the comment box below and add your thoughts. We’d love to hear from you.

Should Employees Access Social Media at the Office?

According to new data from ScanSafe, a web filtering company, companies are cracking down even more on employee use of social media sites in the workplace. They indicate that 76% of companies now block social media sites, a 20% increase over the past six months, making social media sites the most blocked type of site within companies. ScanSafe says employers are linking the negative impact of productivity to the use of social networking, online banking and Webmail. 

Before blocking these sites, are companies thinking through how they could use social media to benefit the company? Using social media appropriately can be used to increase customer service, and can help boost employee engagement.

Other sources, such as Watson Wyatt Worldwide, suggest social media is the new frontier for companies to communicate, especially internally. They compare companies' productivity fear to the 1990s productivity fear, which was based on allowing the internet into the workplace. They recommend taking the same steps as in the 90s - establish clear acceptable usage guidelines while also adopting social media for internal purposes.

On the sales and marketing side of the business, companies are rapidly embracing Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media sites to promote the company, build traffic to their website and retail locations, as well as buzz about their products and services. Effective HR communicators know that employees need to understand the role they play in your company marketing. Do your employees understand the company? Its products and services? Its goals? How you market your business - including on social media sites?

Of course, there may be some employees who abuse the privilege of having access to social media sites. But the other benefits to allowing employees to access these sites - higher employee engagement, better customer service, etc - can far exceed the downside. 

Establish some rules around usage - appropriate sites to visit on company time vs. over the lunch hour, limit the amount of time allowed on social media, posting to company sites, etc. Once your policy is in place, be sure to send your employees links to the company marketing social media sites, so they can understand what the company is doing, and become a more engaged part of the team.

How is your company handling social media with its employees? Have you blocked access to social media, or do you encourage employees to learn the technology? How have you used social media effectively for your employees? We'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas - click on the comments section below and let us know what's worked for you.

Using Social Media to Improve Employee Engagement

Last week, The Inside Voice focused on how to introduce social media to your employees. A few years ago, using social media to communicate with employees was new and unproven. Even today, in my conversations with HR teams, many still feel that social media is something that is used for consumers, and rarely for internal communications.

Recently, Talent Management did an article that disputes this mindset. It shows that social media is becoming an increasingly important tool that HR departments use to keep employees engaged. This is based on a recent Employee Engagement Survey completed by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and Buck Consultants.

The results surprised me. The number one communication method that companies in the survey used to engage employees and increase productivity was social media, with 79% of the respondents using this tactic. Other, more traditional internal communications were less popular on the survey rankings: email (75%), intranet (72%), face-to-face meetings (50%), website (36%), and employee newsletters (28%).

Blogs are the social media of choice for companies, with 47% of companies currently using blogs. Which social media are companies planning to use in the future? Discussion boards (33%), Wikis (31%), Yammer (29%) and podcasts (28%) top the list.

What are some ways your company can leverage social media to communicate with employees? Here are some ideas to get you started:

-          Internal blogs. A regular blog posting from the president or management team providing insight into new product launches, sales trends, and new market opportunities can help employees feel more a part of the company, and help them understand how their role affects  the company. This communication is not a PR piece, but provides an appropriate level of information can be especially valuable in times when sales are down, or when there may be bad news on the forefront.

-          Wikis and Yammer. Both of these are great tools to boost productivity, especially for project teams.  Wikis allow multiple employees to make changes on one master document, so employees don’t spend time looking for the most recent version of a document – they make changes online that go live immediately. Yammer allows project teams to touch base internally in a Twitter-like communication, just to the people that need to receive the updates, or who have the answers to pressing project question.

-          Podcasts. Training and education are the perfect opportunities to use podcasting. Simply record the training program, and employees can listen online, or download longer programs to their MP3 player so they can listen at their convenience. This is a great medium for product training, sales tips, new benefit introductions, and topics that people may want to hear multiple times.

What social media does your company use to boost employee engagement? What successes have you had? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

 

Introducing Social Media to Your Employees

A colleague of mine, Elizabeth Borton of Write On Target sent me an article from a recent Employee Benefit News that I wanted to share with you. It raises the hot topic: how much control should a company have over its employees’ social online networking, and the information they post on these sites? For companies that decide to allow and encourage employees to post online as a part of a corporate initiative, how do you introduce this media to them to maximize impact and manage the message?

Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey results show that employers and employees take different sides on this issue when it comes to employee use of social media tools such as blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.  Not surprisingly, the majority of business executives (60%) feel that they have the right to know how employees profile themselves and their companies online, while the majority of employees (53%) assert that social networking pages are not their employer’s concern.

It is interesting to see the number of businesses using social networking and why. In the survey, business executives said:

·          Their CEO is on Facebook (31%) or Twitter (14%).

·          The company uses social networking as a part of their business and operations strategy (30%), or to manage and build the brand (29%).

·          The company uses social networking as an internal communication tool (23%), or to engage employees (21%).

These indicators tell us that companies are using social media as a part of their communications mix – to grow business, to recruit employees, and even keep them engaged at the company. Many companies even have employee-created or company-sponsored corporate Facebook profiles.

Once you’ve determined that social media is right for your company, how do you introduce this to the employees, and ingrain social networking into the corporate culture? Here are a few steps to move you forward:

·          Develop your social networking policy. Include key elements such as how to monitor employee use while minimizing risk and exposure to the company. But understand that social media changes frequently, so design your policy to capture the positive aspects of social media and leave room for flexibility as the tools evolve.

·          Announce the social media plan to employees. Include details of how online networking will benefit the company. Is it meant for sales growth? Customer service? Corporate branding? Is this an internal tool only? Let employees know the important part they play in this introduction. The message may differ by role, departments, position/title, etc. Be clear on your expectations, the rules, which media is allowed, preferred.

·          Launch social networking to new hires in their onboarding program. A well-defined introduction sets the stage for proper use and understanding of the tools. Emphasize not just the social media policy, but how you’d like them to engage in social media to further the business needs, especially in their new role.

·          Consider doing some social media training. This is especially important if you have “front line” employees who interact online, maybe monitoring Twitter or other media for customer comments. And cover the dos and don’ts of social media. Many of the unfortunate employer postings today may have been avoided by more of an understanding of what should and should not be posted online.

·          Make it fun. Show employees (especially the technophobes) that social media can be enjoyable and interesting. But while you’re doing that, be sure they know the rules – acceptable use, amount of time allowed, whatever your policy allows to support the business.

·          Reinforce good, social media etiquette regularly. Highlight examples of good online postings and recognize employees for good, appropriate postings. Consider including this on your intranet, employee newsletter or in team meetings.

·          Give periodic employee updates on how the online initiatives are working. Where possible, include how the employee online updates were able to help in any of the measurement areas. Did it help to grow business? Save an account? Bring in new qualified employees? Let employees know what’s working.

Helping your employees understand their role in building your company through the proper use of social media can be made part of a healthy, corporate culture. Once the parameters are set, continue to develop ways that your employees can play a part in growing the company using new technology tools.

Has your company become a part of the social media wave? Which social media tools do you use? What’s worked for you? Share your successes and challenges.