My PRgative

Employees want fresh, candid and personally relevant information about their company.

At some companies, open rates for emails and intranet metrics such as unique visits, page views and time spent are declining. 

Some tuned-out employees are using spam filters to block emails from corporate and HR.  And why aren’t they going to the town hall style employee meetings?  The information, they say, isn’t relevant.

What employees typically want is fresh, candid and personally relevant information about an organization with context relating to what’s going on in the world, to what customers tell them and to the work they do everyday.  Most of all, employees want to control their communication experience by asking questions, adding comments, learning other employees’ perspectives and even creating their own news.

Social media can fit that bill.  But at many companies, executives are resistant to the adoption of social media because of concerns that it will sap worker productivity. 

Despite this reluctance, smart organizations are using social media to engage employees. The key to this engagement is not to tack social media tools onto the existing employee communications program.  Instead, success requires reshaping communication so that social media becomes a core strategy that changes the role of employees from spectators to active participants.

Take the example of a friend of mine who’s responsible for global internal communications for a supply and trading business division within a global energy company.  Internally, she has implemented a business blog for employees to more actively engage with leadership.

Her business case for the blog pointed out:

• Employees want two-way communication. 
• They are spread out across the globe.
• The technology would enhance the quality and effectiveness of communication across a generationally diverse audience.
• Blogs are becoming valuable tools within business.

“Before I set up any meetings with leadership, I put together a plan on how the process would work, who would do what, when each person would blog and why we were going to blog,” she explained.  “Basically, I put together a business case that showed how this one tool would be part of the overall tactical plan to achieve the goal of demystifying and promoting the business, both to the business employees and the company.”

How’s it working so far?  In March, an employee communications survey captured high marks for the blog.

“I’ve been stressing that people should not look at the number of comments a post receives, but look at both the hits and unique views,” my friend said.  “So while we are pleased with the interaction the blog is creating, we can prove that the bulk of the audience is at least reading the posts, and messages are being reinforced.”

What’s next?  She tells me, “I’m looking forward to adding video to our site – a sort of “in their own words” type of communications tool.”