Using social media to connect employees : tools and tricks

I recently wrote about how we are now ready for the next phase of social media : using it to connect employees, instead of just using it as a way to connect customers. There is a perceived risk in this by organizations however, as they view social media in the workplace as shorthand for ‘employees messing about on Facebook all day’. This is exactly why companies need to develop a coherent social media strategy for internal communications, to help ensure that use of social media is productive and conducive to the development of the business and its products. So how are you meant to do this, and do these theories really work in practice?

Using Yammer effectively

Yammer is arguably the best tool around for connecting employees via a social platform ; it is free, secure and easy to use without becoming a distraction to work. It will only provide real value however, if it’s used effectively and not just created as an alternative to simply sending an email. Firstly, you need to educate employees into how Yammer actually is different to email. And this is where collaboration comes in. Within email, everything is essentially contained within silos. You choose the employees that are likely to be relevant to the subject of the email and contain the conversation within that group. But great things can happen when you look outside of the normal group, and open something up to collaboration. So maybe you’re organizing a brainstorm for a particular client, or you’re looking for a strategy to promote a particular product and you ask your normal team. It might just happen however that you have someone within the company that is a key fan of the particular area you’re looking at – sports for example – that can contribute far more than you ever expected. But they might sit in the accounts department and HR and would normally be left out of these conversation. By openly creating this conversation to all staff on Yammer, you are opening up your knowledge sources, which is a key facet of social technologies.

You also shouldn’t be afraid to use Yammer for things that are strictly outside of the normal work subjects. The fact is that discovering new content can aide you in ways you may never have thought possible, and this can be constructed on Yammer if employees are trained in how to use it. So encourage link sharing to particular articles, videos etc.. that everyone can access. In this way you open up the conversation.

Give everyone an iPad

Okay, so it not be financially feasible to give everyone in your company an iPad – we don’t all have the luxury of a United Airlines who can distribute 11,000 iPads to their employees. But you would be surprised at the huge discrepancy in knowledge and acceptance of social media within an organization. This can come down to the basics of internet access outside the workplace and how feasible it is for a particular employee to spend their spare time on social networks. Everyone has a right to access social platforms and I believe organizations have a role to play here (that will ultimately benefit them) in educating staff into how social media functions and how it’s transforming businesses. By organizing a pool of iPads that can be distributed around staff, you can allow staff to familiarize themselves with how social media works and open up the tools that they have to access this. Encourage them to download apps, visit company Facebook Pages and experience first hand how social media access can transform your daily life.

Create a company slideshare

Now companies are creating more and more information that is distributed online, but it’s not always distributed internally. You might have execs giving presentations, case studies being shared, reports and research from within the organization that is even more valuable for your internal stakeholders than you external ones. But it’s not very nice for employees if they’re not granted access to this information or they have to find it online at the same time as everyone else. Companies should create a Slideshare account that is circulated to all employees, where all the latest presentations are uploaded and notifications sent to staff when new presentations are available. This information will still be public, but you are creating a centralized resource for all information. An alternative is to create a private slideshare account that only employees can access, but make this collaborative and open up feedback.

Put everyone on the customer service desk

If you’re working on the customer service team for your organization on Twitter, Facebook etc.. you are going to gather an incredible amount of information from your customers by being very much at the ‘coalface’. The insights gained here are invaluable for understanding how your company is perceived and what are the key issues facing people, as well as the positive points about your company or service. There is a danger though that this creates a division of knowledge within the organization, where one set of employees know very much what’s happening on the ground, but this is separate to people that might be the decision makers, or have to process these customer queries online. Everyone in your organization should have experience in running your social media profiles (where possible) to see first hand the information that is available and what is being discussed. This kind of experience can’t be replicated elsewhere in the business but is essential if social media is to be embraced at all levels.

Use video chat

If you’re a large organization, there may well be people in the company that never speak to each other, aside from flat communication via email. There are a range of video services available that allow for private video chats and this should be strongly embraced in organizations. Consider putting your exec in front of the camera once a week, fortnight or month to address employees and importantly engage in 2 way conversation, instead of feeding information from the top down and expecting this to filter through to everyone. Social technologies can be used to create connections internally that weren’t possible before and the benefits abound.

Develop social media policies

This is a very real consideration for organisations, as there is incredible value in allowing your employees to use social media but you might find that people don’t know what they can/can’t say or even how they can use social media. There’s an element of responsibility by the organisation to educate their employees into how to use social media effectively, which can also help you avoid getting into hot water if someone says something they shouldn’t. Often people don’t understand the consequences of sharing something publicly on a social network, so they might be so excited about a product launch for example that they tweet about it, before anything should be said in public. By taking the time to educate staff into social media and developing a social media policy document, you can enable better connections between employees internally and the external perception of your company. This might be as light as just letting people know that they need to disclaim if talking about a client, but it’s best practice to have these guidelines in place overall, while recognising that they need to be flexible and not constraining on people’s personal use of social media.