Unleashing the Power of Internal Social Media

What do social media users want from a company?

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• Ensures that all of its content is accurate and reliable

• Ensures its Intranet and its social media integrations are easy-to-use

• Posts content that is interesting and valuable to the user

• Ensures content is readily accessible and easy to find

• Develops visually appealing online designs

• Consistently updates and keeps content fresh on all social media platforms

• Offers content that is easily shareable

• Provides its users with access to exclusive content or information online

• Establishes open dialogues with employees

• Regularly solicits feedback and criticism from employees

• Invites employees to interact with each other

• Encourages employee participation on the social networks it operates

• Uses social media to mobilize its employees to engage in offline activities

• Has a visible and active CEO or senior leadership presence online

• Uses a targeted social media approach to reach different types of people

• Makes use of the most relevant, popular and trend-setting social media platforms

• Has links to each of its social media platforms on the home page of its Intranet

• Actively engages users through the use of several social media or interactive platforms

• Integrates its content throughout all of its social media platforms

• Is willing to take risks to try new and innovative social media strategies that enhance the user experience

• Has a committed team of company ambassadors that participate online and act as the face of the company

When it comes to internal social media, what do employees really want from a company?

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If you provide the right tools, can Internal Social Media initiatives…

Engage and motivate employees?

Create brand ambassadors?

Bolster reputation internally and externally?

Help employees contribute to bottom-line business results?

So what? The business case for ISM

Internal Social Media effectively engages employees

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• The executive team in my company supports and lives our values

• My company’s values are clearly aligned with our business strategy

• My company’s executive team clearly explains the direction the company is heading

• My company has a set of clearly defined values that drives all of our behavior

• My company’s executive team shares positive and negative news openly

• My company’s executive team exemplifies authentic, open and honest communications

• The executive team in my company communicates regularly about our company values

• My company’s executive team clearly explains the reasons behind decisions

• I receive consistent information from all the leaders in my company

• My supervisor takes the time to listen to the opinions and ideas of others

• My supervisor responds to my feedback

• My supervisor provides clear direction and priorities for our work group

• My colleagues are comfortable sharing information and ideas with peers

• In my company, I am comfortable sharing information and ideas

• I have all the information that’s necessary for me to do my job

• Information and ideas flow freely within my organization

ISM is one tool among many

APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald jointly sponsored an online survey among U.S. adults who have

been employed full-time at least one year at a company with at least 500 employees.

The purpose of the study is to determine the state of the

U.S. workplace as viewed by America’s workforce.

This year’s study explored employment-related issues and how companies communicate with their employees,

with a particular focus on the use and prevalence of internal social media (ISM)

in the workplace.

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The investigation

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How are companies using social media?

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The study’s top insights

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Insight 1: Employee retention & recruitment

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Social media is a job search fact of life …

Considerations for retention and recruitment

1 Source: Study by Jobvite, as reported at mbaonline.com 2 Source: 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, www.cisco.com/go/connectedreport

ISM can empower employees to become better brand ambassadors — your stealth recruiting team

ask about social media policies during job interviews2

at a company that bans social media — or they will circumvent the policy2

credit Facebook with helping find their jobs1

… and promising candidates bring high ISM expectations:

18.4 million Americans

2/3 of college students

56% claim they’ll forego a job

http://www.cisco.com/go/connectedreport

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Insight 2: ISM demonstrates & supports innovation

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• ISM can help drive new discoveries, but alone is not a panacea for innovation

• Tailor innovation tools to your innovators – the way employees engage ISM depends on industry, function and demographics

Considerations for innovation

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Intuit’s Innovation Management

• Created Intuit Brainstorm to launch an innovation initiative

• Broke down barriers for communication between silos

• Innovation development timeline decreased by 60% (from 13 months to 5 months)

• Idea creation increased a reported 1,000%

• Participation in idea creation increased 500%

• More than 3,800 ideas were generated

Considerations for innovation

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Insight 3: ISM supports collaboration

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Considerations for collaboration

To foster collaboration, you need to balance fears with potential opportunities

• The enterprise cost of not finding information is extremely high

• Fostering a culture of reciprocal trust is essential

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Considerations for collaboration

Wells Fargo taps into the “Wisdom of Crowds”

• Only pilots ISM tools after business lines identify a specific need

• ISM tools have helped break down hierarchical, organizational and geographic boundaries

• Employees report ISM tools eliminate duplicate efforts and make meetings shorter — and the company feel smaller

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Insight 4: ISM supports active employee advocacy to uphold brand & reputation

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Considerations for employee advocacy

Just like other employee engagement channels, ISM must support employee buy-in and effective communication flow

• Leaders need to know the role of ISM in company advocacy —and how to use it

• ISM should reinforce dialogue up, down, and across the company

• Employees should consider ISM an open and honest arena

• Employees should consider themselves ISM co-creators

ISM strategy and Social EQ: social media cascades from internal to external channels

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The Internal Social Media Model

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Quality content is king – but varies by audience

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ISM is nice, but leadership matters more

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Unisys: A 138-year old tech firm “goes social”1

Understanding its culture, Unisys determined:

1. The why — not the what — should come first

2. Employees value most what they help to build

3. Executives must lead by example

4. ISM must be embedded in the culture

1 Source: Meister, Jeanne C., “Increase Your Company's Productivity With Social Media,” Harvard Business Review Blog Network

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Unisys: ISM investments support business goals

“Inside Unisys” fosters collaboration and productivity

• Fosters broad array of well-read executive and employee postings

• Has become a crucial sales tool to share wins and learn from losses

“My Site” spurs innovation with “Ask Me About” feature

• In 18 months, 15,000 Unisys employees world-wide (out of 23,000) built profiles and created hashtags

• Tool quickly matches expertise with cross-functional challenges

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Three key lessons

1. An ISM strategy should be built from within —informed by its culture, driven by distinct business needs, and embraced by early adopters

2. Executives and leaders should not only align around strategy, but embody the change they envision

3. Social media guidelines are good, but training for social media literacy makes them sustainable

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What steps should you take next?

1. Diagnose

– What business dilemma you’re solving for

– How employees currently engage social media and your Intranet

2. Mindset for Design

– Understand all your fears and limitations: cultural, psychological, legal, financial and technical

– Align leaders around business goals and practical limits

3. Establish Guiding Principles

– Determine cultural stance

– Develop social media guidelines and metrics for success

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What steps should you take next?

4. Implement Sustainably

– Choose only the ISM tools (wikis, chat, blogs, microblogs, etc.) that are relevant to your culture and business challenge

– Train for across-the-enterprise social media literacy

5. Measure and Adjust

– Use surveys, ISM diagnostics and agreed-to metrics to determine use patterns and enterprise value

– Keep what works, tweak what doesn’t

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Today’s presenters

Evan Kraus Evan Kraus is senior vice president of APCO Online®, a service group that delivers powerful, results-focused online communication strategies for APCO Worldwide’s clients around the world. Under his leadership, APCO Online has emerged as a recognized leader in helping clients leverage the online channel to shape their reputation and influence issue environments. Mr. Kraus has served as a senior strategic counselor for many of the world’s largest businesses – helping them optimize their Web presence, tell a better corporate story, “push” their messages out to target audiences, shape online issue debates, identify, attract and mobilize supporters and endorsers, conduct outreach to bloggers and other new media channels and analyze the online environment to form strategy.

Maril MacDonald Maril pioneered a discipline that initiates collaboration with corporate leaders to optimize business performance by engaging and mobilizing stakeholders behind a company’s strategic goals, its culture and its brand. Maril founded Gagen MacDonald in 1998 and serves as the firm’s CEO. The firm’s clients include some of the most recognized brands in the world. From 1993 to 1997, Maril served as vice president, corporate communications, and was a member of the executive management committee for Navistar where she directed the company’s highly successful turnaround. She also held leadership positions with Pitman-Moore Inc., Bayer USA Inc. and The Standard Oil Company/British Petroleum. Maril is past president of the board of directors of the Arthur W. Page Society and a trustee of both the Institute for Public Relations and the Arthur W. Page Center. Maril is also the founder of Let Go & Lead (letgoandlead.com), an online community dedicated to leadership in the 21st century.

Research methodology

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Employees represent a cross-section with respect to company size, industry,

job responsibility, tenure, gender, and age.

Data were analyzed using crosstabulations and advanced analytical techniques to understand the

underlying relationships within the data set.

Survey Population: U.S. full-time employees

Sample Design: Online panel screened

Eligibility Criteria: Employed full-time at least one year at a company with at least 500 employees

Sample Size: n = 1000

Margin of Error: ± 3.1% (at 95 percent confidence level)

Data Collection Methodology: Online

Field Dates: October 7-11, 2011

Date post:	09-May-2015
Category:	Technology
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