Original source: Inside Out Recruiting, Recruiter.com

The job of the recruiting department today has become somewhat of a business generalist role.  They are measured in terms of typical recruiting metrics, but they really have to be astute in every facet of the business.  Marketing is one of those skill sets that a progressive recruiting department must add to their list of skill sets.  You’re no longer just recruiting for the marketing department, but you are literally doing marketing for your company in order to attract and retain top talent.

Marketing you ask?  Yes, you must become kings and queens of messaging as it relates to conveying your “employer brand”.  This starts on the inside of your organization.  It doesn’t do much good if your recruiters know that your company is an employer of choice but nobody on the inside of the organization knows that.  Once you “market” your key messages inside of your organization, your employees begin speaking with that same vernacular and hopefully recruiting great candidates along the way.

Utilize tools such as an Intranet or Employee Benefit Portal to communicate these key messages about your company.  That’s a start, but from there you should brand some of these key messages on things like trade-show giveaways, posters within your physical building, on your email tags, and certainly on the pages of your career site on your company’s external website. The important thing here is to make it a whole-company effort: every touch point between your company and the outside world is a potential recruiting opportunity.

How can your company be an employer of choice?  Here are 7 ways that you promote your company from the inside out:

1. Go for “best of lists” best company to work for, fastest growing, etc.  Make sure that you use these accreditations on your Intranet, company Facebook page, company LinkedIn page, and as an email signature.  This messaging should be well known to your employees so they can easily throw that little factoid out when they are explaining to their friends what they do and who they work for.
2. At the end of each fiscal year put a short summary together that shows the number of people promoted and what % of your staff that is.  Track that year over year and announce the results and any goals associated with that.   Post this information on your Intranet and your career pages.  People like to know that employee development is important in your company and that they won’t just get stuck in a dead end job.
3. Highlight your employees who have reached milestone anniversaries, post their story on the Intranet for employees to see and have something to look forward to. Consider more public options as well, so long as they are permission based.
4. Have you had employees get recognized for awards in their field, published articles, or patents?  Make a big deal about that with your employees on the Intranet as well as on your career portal; that tells people that they will be recognized for their personal achievements and contributions.  If you can influence HR to offer a bonus for these types of achievements that would be even better.
5. If your company offers salary or other benefits that are better than other companies in your industry, announce that.  Make it known that you research this information every year and that your goal is to stay xx above the average in order to attract and retain the best talent.  If it’s working, say so.  Your employees will remember that when a recruiter comes calling on them or when their friends ask them if your company pays well.
6. Work with your sustainability or energy management department to get some stats on what your company is doing above and beyond to reduce your facilities and overall carbon footprint.  If it’s better than other employers in your industry and area, make sure to announce that to your employees.  A greater number of employees are concerned about sustainability and would prefer to work for a company who promotes sustainable practices.
7. Get quotes from your employees on why they like working for you and use those quotes to form your branding messages. Make your employer-pitch as human and emotive as possible. The best messages from a marketing standpoint are ideally stories, not just quotes.

The bottom line is, if your employees are fed the branding messages consistently, your marketing can stick in their heads like that 5 dollar footlong commercial. If every employee in your company both understands the value of employment branding and knows “the pitch” by heart, your recruiting efforts will be easier. If your overall goal is to land the top talent in your market, it can’t just be you doing all the heavy lifting.  The whole company from the inside out needs to be on point and on message, but of course most importantly, be inspired to help follow your company vision and advance its image.

Every company has two distinct brands, its employer brand and its consumer brand. With the rise of social networking, your company, how you run it and your culture has become a fishbowl — everything you do is on display for all to see. And like it or not, your employees have an abundance of channels for broadcasting their opinions — both negative and positive.

Company branding and employer branding aren’t the same, but they intersect to fuel each other. Many of the same characteristics that motivate consumers also motivate job seekers. Successful companies foster a culture where employees not only like where they work but also believe in the products and solutions they support. Understanding what distinguishes your employer brand and how it may affect attracting and retaining employees is an essential component to being an employer of choice. It also requires an awareness of changing workplace considerations from the employees’ perspectives to formulate a value proposition to employees that clearly answers the age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”

The employer brand is comprised of a myriad of factors that contribute to how your employees learn, plan and do their work and personal lives. These include everything from the obvious (such as compensation and benefits) to factors which, while more subtle, ultimately affect how employees are motivated and retained — and demonstrate how you’ve taken steps to create a corporate culture where they can thrive.

Below is a list of 11 Employer branding best practices (adapted from a list created by Brett Minchington) that provides clear steps towards establishing an employer brand that bridges business “needs” with employee “wants” and thereby creating a fishbowl that you can proudly display.

1. Establish a real-time career development for employees

Today real-time career development can be facilitated with some imagination, technology devices, innovation and focus.

Take an hour to speak with your employees and assist them to develop a real-time career development plan. This may include coaching them to develop a plan that tracks their career development interests, current job function responsibilities and personal development interests (if it’s just work related people will switch off, many employees want a blended life so if you mix it up a little you will keep it interesting).

2. Get buyin from other functional areas within your organization

It’s no longer efficient or effective to develop and implement an employer brand strategy solely with HR resources and budget. Your employer brand is interconnected with your corporate and consumer brand and the total portfolio needs to be considered if you really want to build an adaptable and agile employer brand.

Schedule a two hour meeting with leaders from HR, Marketing, Communications and IT and have a discussion around these agenda items – it will start the conversation and provide for some good discussion on where to go next. Some of the questions that may be useful include:

• How will a stronger employer brand support our business strategy e.g. mergers and acquisitions, growth, consolidation?
• What are the main factors currently driving our employer brand?
• What kind of organizational culture do we have? How consistent is it across geographical and divisional boundaries?
• What are the most consistently attractive and compelling organizational attributes for both current employees and potential employees?
• What behaviors are felt to be most characteristic of our organization? What are the moments of truth when our organization is at its best (and worse?)
• What is the most useful way of segmenting the employee population in terms of cultural characteristics and distinctive needs?
• What are the most effective channels of employee communication, both top/down and bottom/up?
• Which positions are most critical to our success and what are we currently doing/need to do to attract, engage and retain this talent?
• What levels of resources are we prepared to invest in our employer brand strategy?
• What time frame will we be working towards to define and develop our employer brand strategy?

3. Assess your employer branding performance against best practice

Take this quick assessment to see how your employer branding initiatives measure up against best practice companies. Answer yes of no to each question and then total your score out of 20.

1. We have developed an employer brand strategy
2. We have developed a social media strategy
3. We have at least two of the following working closely on our employer brand strategy – HR/Marketing/Communications/IT
4. Alignment to brand values is part of our performance management system
5. We have an active coaching and mentoring program in place to transfer knowledge and build internal capabilities
6. We have defined our employer brand metrics
7. We have conducted research to determine the perception current employees have about our company
8. We have conducted research to determine the perceptions prospective employees have about our company
9. We monitor what people are saying about our brand online
10. We have identified the leadership competencies we aspire employees at all levels to have
11. We have created a database of talented employees who we would like to hire when the time is right
12. We have a dedicated careers section on our corporate website
13. Managers have access to a leadership development program
14. We have defined our employer value propositions (EVPs)
15. We have reviewed our EVP’s in light of the Global Financial Crisis
16. We have an active employee referral program which we promote to staff and external stakeholders
17. We conduct an employee engagement, satisfaction and/or climate survey at least once per year
18. We participate in an external annual best employers and/or employer of choice survey
19. Each staff member has a documented career development plan that is reviewed at least annually
20. We use an IT system to automate our recruitment process and rank candidates against weighted criteria

How did you rate?

0-5 We are in the very early stages
6-12 We have made a start
13-17 We just need some fine tuning
18-20 We are up there with the best

4. Review and update your employer value proposition (EVP) communication assets

When was the last time you review your EVP communication assets, how long ago were they developed? Make it a project to review all your internal and external EVP communication tools and ask the following questions:

• Does our employer value proposition clearly reflect the current employment experience?
• How inspiring is our welcome pack for new hires? How does it differentiate our employment offering?
• Can we deliver on what we are promising in our recruitment communication efforts?
• How effective is our social media strategy – are we engaging with our communities or are we merely broadcasting about our products and services?
• If I was looking for a job how inspired would I be by what our company is communicating and how consistent is the messaging
• How well do our communication assets flow from text – images – audio – video?
• How authentic is our messaging?
• How do we feel about the tone, style and imagery we are using in our communications?

Based on the outcomes of your review, schedule a project to update your communication assets across key offline and online touchpoints.

For a best practice case study, see how effective Starbucks is across its online platforms including facebook, twitter and YouTube

5. Learn from best practice employer brand companies

Study and learn from companies who are leading the way in employer branding including Google, IBM, Starbucks, Sodexo, SAS, Singapore Airlines, Deloitte, McKinsey, etc there are many but these are some good companies to observe and learn from – for starters!. Don’t just study companies in your own industry – you’ll find companies outside your industry a great source of innovation for employer branding best practice. Companies in the oil and gas industry companies such as Chevron, Schlumberger and Shell are good companies to follow as are the major players in the banking and finance industry such as Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.  They all invest in employer branding!

6. Assess the employee lifecycle

Have your business unit leaders assess the employee lifecycle in their function to evaluate how well it adds value to an inspiring employment experience and one that adds, not distracts from engagement and retention efforts.

Employees at your company will transition through different stages of the employee’s lifecycle depending on factors such as age, education, experience, living arrangements, marital status, etc. It is important to understand how important these ‘moments of truths’ are to employees and to realize which ones if not handled well, can be deal breakers and result in employees seeking another place to work whilst being unconsciously unproductive in their current role. It is important to make adjustments based on observation and feedback from employees.

7. Your existing employees are your best brand ambassadors

With the rise of social networking, your company, how you run it and your culture has become a fishbowl. And like it or not, disgruntled workers have an abundance of channels for broadcasting their opinions of the company. The tsunami of people using tools such as Facebook and Twitter to air their loves and hates to the world challenges the degree of control companies have historically had over public perception.

You can not control what is being said but you can substantially influence it by communicating the facts about life inside your company and how employees feel about it. Evaluating and upgrading the employee value proposition is the indispensable first step to creating favorable buzz about working for your company.

Train employees in how to use and leverage social media to support branding efforts and develop a social media sharing culture within your  organization. It won’t happen just because your company has a Facebook page or Twitter profile, employees need to be trained across the company to ensure your initiatives are aligned with your brand strategy. Conduct internal influencer studies to identify your social media rockstars — those employees who are the most connected, active and influential social media participants in your organization.

8. Write a handbook

Write a handbook about your employment practices and use it as an EVP communications tool for all stakeholders. Over a 12 month period, an HR Manager at Essar, a multinational conglomerate corporation in the sectors of steel, energy, power, communications, shipping ports and logistics as well as construction, compiled a book on the company’s mentoring practices and included insights from leaders and employees across the organization. While the publication took a while to write, it provides a lifetime of value for Essar. It has also been an excellent tool to build internal engagement as employees were involved in the development of the product and distribution of it on its release. So find a topic, write about it and share it with stakeholders!

9. Connect your employees on the inside!

How often do we see the ‘wheel being re-invented inside organizations because there is no way to track what has been developed previously and if it has, it’s usually outdated or too hard to find. IBM have had some great success in this area by establishing an internal social networking tool, ‘Beehive’ which has allowed employees across the world to make new connections, share knowledge and capabilities and to advance their career. Connected employees will lead to higher levels of communication and trust between employees across the enterprise and is becoming more important in today’s increasingly dispersed workforces.

10. Foster a culture that mentors employees, not one that burns them out

Too many of today’s leaders are too busy to spend quality time coaching and mentoring or even just communicating with team members due to shorter deadlines, increasing workloads and longer working hours.

Even senior leaders become burnt out, fail to take holidays and disconnect from the very people who can assist them, their staff. This leads to higher levels of disengagement which is an all too common output in organizations around the world today.  For the first time in a decade, research from the Hewitt Global Engagement database shows the percentage of organizations with decreasing engagement now exceeds the percentage with increasing engagement. Slow down. Take the time to share your knowledge and experiences with middle managers to enrich your talent pipelines, increase trust and developed capabilities.

11. Build employer brand awareness, knowledge, skills and capabilities

Most of time employees don’t buy into your vision to develop and implement an employer brand strategy because they lack the skills and capabilities to do so. Employer branding is an emerging field in many economies so take the time to build awareness, knowledge, skill and capabilities within your organization. I’ve written two books, ‘Employer Brand Leadership-A Global Perspective’ and ‘Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain’, and a do it yourself guide, ‘The Employer Brand Manager’s Handbook-2011 International edition’ which will assist you to build employer branding capabilities inside your company.

Additional resources:

Employer Branding:Winning the Post Recession Competition for Talent, Murray Associates

An exclusive, in-depth look into the Super Bowl’s first ever social media command center, the folks who ran it, and how the convergence of technology and people created the ultimate online Super Bowl experience.

Me with Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious

You would think that, the day before the biggest sporting event of the year, the people in charge of the Super Bowl’s Social Media Command Center would be frantic, running around and putting out last minute fires. So imagine my surprise when I walked in and found it to be quite the opposite. Entering the offices of Raidious — the Indianapolis-based digital communications company behind the social media command center — the air was full of activity, but the mood was quiet and calm… almost, I dare say, serene.

And it’s no wonder. Having worked with such brands as Finish Line, Bass Pro Shops and Comcast, Raidious has honed the art of making, managing, and measuring the content that makes digital marketing work. And so, for the folks at Raidious, this really is almost like business as usual — despite this being the largest event they’ve ever managed. A group of 16 Raidious employees and 30 local college and university volunteers were stationed at what can only be akin to iMac Heaven and focused on monitoring all of the Super Bowl’s social media channels. Leading these individuals was Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious. It was my pleasure that he took a few minutes of his day to chat with me

The Super Bowl Host Committee reached out to Raidious for assistance with the committee’s media department over a year and a half ago. Jackson then developed a mission that didn’t compete with the social media or marketing efforts of NFL Enterprises, but to showcase the city of Indianapolis and to create what he calls the “ultimate Super Bowl experience.”

The model was simple: monitor, moderate and publish. Aside from monitoring the Super Bowl’s official blog, Twitter account (@SuperBowl2012), hashtags (#sb46, #superbowl, #sbvillage and #nflexperience), and Facebook page, below is a play-by-play of the action plan:

A 9-screen monitor wall (over 100 sq feet) which provided real-time info from various sources

Mission & Goals

1.  Super Safety – With an anticipated 150,000 visitors to descend on Indianapolis, a main focus of the social media command center is to ensure public safety. They will monitor social media channels for traffic situations, parking recommendations, and anything that could be considered suspicious behavior or malevolent. Additionally, should a crisis situation present itself, the command center will disseminate information for Homeland Security and public safety command centers.
2. Super Service – Part of delivering on the ultimate Super Bowl Experience means highlighting the hospitality of Indianapolis, providing directions, guidance and navigation, and offering information about ongoing Super Bowl events to visitors. The command center will also respond to any negative dialog related to the city or event and to mitigate any negative sentiment — that is, Twitter messages or Facebook comments from disgruntled fans and followers will likely get a rapid response.
3. Capture the Experience – A large function of the social media command center is to gather information, post images and videos, and write content. Essentially, to know what’s happening when and where, capture it and publish it.
4. Amplification – The command center not only monitored conversation, but it was also curators and communicators of content that highlighted positive things related to Indianapolis and the Super Bowl, and used digital channels to spread this information.

Campaigns & Programs

• #Social46 – As part of the effort to make the Super Bowl the most connected story in history, 46 of the most socially influential people (based on their Klout scores) in Indiana were selected to represent the city and state of Indiana, as well as give exclusive insight into all things related to the Super Bowl. Read more.
• #Supercars – To  bring a little “Indy” to the NFL, 33 Indy cars were placed around the state of Indiana, one for each of the 32 NFL teams and one for Super Bowl XLVI. Fans of both the NFL and Indy 500 drove around the state  to find each car. Read more.
• Foursquare – Considering that over 130,000 people checked into last year’s Super Bowl, it was only natural to use location-based Foursquare as a means to deliver flash sales to visitors checking in to local hot spots and Super Bowl events.
• #46Stories – Raidious asked 46 media outlets in and around the Indianapolis area to collect and publish stories and to help generate conversation and hype. The 46 stories series gives fans access to events around the city and also asks for them to share their own stories. Complete archive of Super Bowl 46 stories.
• Content Team – Huddles were spread around the city to act as “human versions of Google.” Armed with Galaxy tablets, members of the huddle teams were prepared to answer visitors questions such as where to find a good place to eat or to provide directions and guidance. Each huddle was comprised of an 11 person team, including a Quarterback (the leader) and a Running Back (a runner of information). Additionally, visitors could take images or record a video at various Social Sharing kiosks that would then be posted to the Super Bowl’s YouTube or Flickr channels.

Thirty university and college students helped monitor online chatter using Awareness, Inc. Social Media Monitoring Hub

Tools & Technology

•  Awareness, Inc. – After test driving many different social monitoring systems, Raidious chose Awareness Inc.’s Social Media Marketing Hub for publishing, monitoring and analyzing conversation streams. Raidious  chose Awareness, Inc because of it’s capabilities and user interface, liking it so much that they even worked with Awareness, Inc. developers to further enhance the analytics portion of the service (to be available in a future release). Using the Hub’s built-in workflow, the 30 university volunteers would monitor and respond to chatter that would then be immediately put into an “editing” queue. One of the 16 Raidious employees would then approve the response and push it live.
• ChaCha Answers Application – ChaCha, also based in Indianapolis, is a service that gives free, real-time answers to any question both online at ChaCha.com and through mobile phones. Raidious used ChaCha to build a list of responses to take the guess work out of how to best answer comments or chatter for the volunteers.
• NSixty – Raidious used NSixty to create the video recording kiosks found throughout the Super Bowl Village. These were available for visitors to create videos via the video recording stations which would then be uploaded into a moderation queue and then published to YouTube or Flickr by a Raidious employee.
• Monitor Wall (NFL Network, WTHR, ESPN) – On the wall of the social media command center was a 9-screen monitor wall (over 100 sq feet) which provided real-time web traffic from Google Analytics (beta), sentiment & web monitoring via Social Mention, geotargeted monitoring from real time trends from NewsMap, and sentiment from WeFeelFine.org.

Measurement & Engagement
The Social Media Command Center tracked five key metrics :

• Reach – this metric is based on the number of people in the direct audience. So, the number of Twitter followers (27, 955 as of this writing) and Facebook fans (currently just over 17,000). Before Raidious became involved, the direct audience was hovering around 5,000 followers and fans. In two weeks time, Raidious grew that audience to over 48,000 (as of Kick off) simply by commenting on wall posts and responding to tweets. Which proves that proactive engagement does indeed work.
• Amplification – this metric is based on the number of impressions generated by the direct audience’s audience. So, retweets, shares and other impressions that were generated by the second level audience (friends of friends). According to Jackson, they were seeing content amplified at 800K – 1M impressions a day — that’s an estimated 14 million audience just in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. Translating that into cost per thousand, he estimated that they were providing over 500K in value to the Super Bowl’s overall marketing strategy.
• Sentiment – assessing the mood / emotions of the overall audience by looking at the context, tone, emotion, polarity and objectivity of the comments. Sentiment is measured as a positive:negative ratio — the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. According to the metrics available at the time I spoke with Jackson, the current sentiment was 3:1 positive ratio — this ratio is not commonly seen above 2:1, so this achievement is something of which to be quite proud.
• Influence – relates to how influential the Host committee is based on Klout score. The Super Bowl’s Klout score is holding steady at 68 while the NFL has a Klout score of 65.
• Activity – how often content was being published. Jackson anticipated this number to increase slightly, but he was also very cognizant of avoiding audience burn.
• As of Friday, fans had already made more than 1,748 videos and 4,502 postcards via the social sharing kiosks with an average of 700+ interactions a day. Read more.
• Jackson estimated that his team was sending one response every two minutes. Compound that number over the 48 hours just before Kick off and you have an activity rate of 1,440 responses.
• Social-TV analytics company, Bluefin Labs has so far tracked more than 12.2 million social-media comments during and after Super Bowl XLVI, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. That’s a 578% increase over the total Bluefin tracked last year (1.8 million). Read more.

It’s clear that the efforts of the Social Media Command Center had two overall accomplishments of which everyone involved (the NFL, Raidious, and all the vendors) should be proud: 1) provided guidance and generated content for people who attended the Super Bowl in real life, and 2) extended the Super Bowl experience to a direct audience of 48,000 plus an amplified audience of 14M (calculating the 2 weeks leading up to the Super Bowl) in various online communities.

I would like to thank Taulbee for his time and a shout out to all the folks at Raidious for a great visit. Most importantly, I would like to thank Awareness, Inc and Scratch Marketing + Media (Jenn Reilly) for inviting me to experience the efforts of the Social Media Command Center first hand.

I consider myself very philosophical. But I do not like the proverbial chicken and egg question. And I get asked this a lot: What do you think comes first? A great company to work for or great people who work there?  To me it’s just an exercise in futility because, at the end of the day, one doesn’t exist without the other. That is, without good people, it’s extremely difficult for an organization to be great. And vice versa. In 2009, employee turnover cost U.S. businesses an estimated $300 billion. The staggering cost of employee turnover can be viewed as simply the cost of doing business, however, additional damage occurs when turnover is compounded by poor hiring and management practices. (The Real Cost of a Bad Hire, TEK Systems)

Finding Great People

But that means you have to be deliberate and thoughtful in your hiring practices. It’s tempting to make rash hiring decisions because you simply “need a body.” But that wrong body in the wrong job can end up costing your company more in the long run. With today’s economy and operating costs, companies simply can’t afford to hire “bad eggs.”

The scarcest commodity in business is not customers or technology capital — its people. And the greatest challenge for recruiters and leaders isn’t just hiring people — it’s hiring the right people for the right jobs. When people operate in their “sweet spot,” they lead, naturally. You don’t have to tell them to lead. You don’t have to ask them to lead. They just do it. (Developing Great Leaders for Great Companies, Steve Olson, Generative Consulting)

There are several different costs associated with replacing an experienced employee, all of which directly impact a company’s financial performance:

• The cost of covering the position while vacant
• The cost of finding a replacement. In fact,
• The cost of getting a new person up to speed

And did you know:

• Replacement of an employee can range from two to seven times his / her salary
• Hiring and training costs can vary from 25 to 200% of annual compensation
• The more an employee earns, the more money it costs to replace him / her
  (The Real Cost of a Bad Hire, TEK Systems)

Thanks to a survey published by Careerbuilder.com and illustrated by Mindflash’s infographic, “The Staggering Cost of Bad Hires“, we learn just how much bad hires cost companies, and what you can do to avoid them.

• Conduct great interviews
• Always check references
• Give your employee a great first day on the job

To this list I would also add:

• Be methodical. It’s better and more cost effective to take a longer time to find the right employee with the right skills rather than hiring the wrong employee / replacing a bad one.
• Culture fit. Ensure the person’s personality and work style fit within the company culture.
• Consider the EVP. The Employee Value Proposition. Ask yourself what makes someone successful at your company? What makes someone unsuccessful?

People are ‘not’ the most important thing…The ‘right’ people are. In fact, the ‘wrong’ people are your biggest liability.

Operating as a Great Company

Some people might argue that the greatness of a company is based on the greatness of its leaders. I don’t disagree. But great leaders must come from somewhere: great leaders are not born; great leaders are made. And any company looking for great leaders should look first at their own internal talent pool.

Operating as a great company means developing great leaders by lining up employees to their “sweet spot.” Putting them in positions that takes advantage of what they’re good at, what they like doing, and for which they have a genuine passion.

Laurie Bassi, Ph.D. co-authored a study showing a link between investments in training and company success. Her research demonstrated that companies that spend more on training on perform better financially than do those companies that spend less.

Her publication, Maximizing Your Return on People, identifies 23 HCM practices that fall within five broad HCM driver categories:

• Leadership practices
• Employee engagement
• Knowledge accessibility
• Workforce optimization
• Learning capacity

In general, improvements or declines in organizational performance can be tied directly to improvements or declines in HCM practices. It also includes a great self-assessment survey for estimating your organization’s HCM effectiveness.

Without a doubt, the adoption of using social technologies inside the organization is rampant. So many companies are hearing the loud beat of the “employee engagement” drum, but the task of effectively assessing your needs, implementing technologies correctly, and measuring for success and sustainability is a daunting project. So, it’s okay to slow down, take a deep breath and work from a well-crafted roadmap. Few things make employees more cynical than a social media platform that no one uses. And if your company quickly deployed a ["insert social tool here"] only to find that it fell flat because no one saw the value in using it then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Therefore, it’s refreshing to see firms such as Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide working together to help shape internal social media programs. Recently, they analyzed research among U.S. adults working for companies with more than 500 employees that revealed 21 discrete attributes which in turn combine to form three major factors (see image below) that employees look for when deciding whether their company has effective social media internally.

As a result of their research, Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide created a five-step process to build social media from within, ensuring sustainable change through shared goal-setting, leadership alignment, employee training and measurement of key metrics. Some highlights are below but the full whitepaper is available: Harness the Power of Internal Social Media.

A Five Step Roadmap for Internal Social Media

1. Assess

• Prioritize your business objectives by determining what it is you are trying to achieve: employee retention, boost collaboration, enhance executive visibility, increase speed to innovation or turn your employees into powerful brand ambassadors.
• Map your communication by analyzing your current information flow and determining how employees engage your intranet or social media tools.
• Determine what your ideal social media ecosystem would look like. What cultural differentiators are you hoping to foster?

2. Align for Design

• Assess your perceived issues and actual limitations by balancing potential risks against projected gains in productivity, collaboration and innovation.
• Develop solid company guidelines for social media use and use metrics to measure how well your engagement
  tools are working.
• Align and train your leadership and get senior management buy-in to create a social networking mindset across business functions.

3. Implement

• Identify the most effective tools for your needs—from wikis and microblogs to robust knowledge-sharing and innovation platforms.
• Work closely with your IT teams to ensure your efforts are compliant with all internal rules, standards and architectures.

4. Ensure Sustainability

• To harness the power of social media and ensure your networking investments are sustainable, it is essential that you implement replicable, enterprise-wide training so that you overcome capability gaps (e.g., generational, geographical) that are present within your company.

5. Measure and Adjust

• Let’s face it, judging social media ROI is difficult. But by establishing a benchmark and then conducting employee engagement focus groups and surveys, linkage analyses, social media diagnostics and business analytics, it is possible to see how you deliver against expectations.
• Keep what works, tweak what doesn’t. Troubleshoot your challenges and identify cost-effective ways to reactivate your underutilized social media channels.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: it’s innovative and encouraging to see so many companies tackling collaboration and productivity through the use of social technologies. But a connected enterprise doesn’t automatically create an engaged workforce.

It’s easy to create a collaboration portal, but it’s much more difficult to make engagement a way of life in your organization.

I’m interested in hearing what you think about this five step roadmap and whether it differs from one that you might have created. If so, please share. I’d love to hear from you.

~ Elizabeth

With 61% of employees saying that internal social media helps them to better collaborate and another 60% saying internal social media demonstrates innovation… it’s becoming much more evident that Internal Social Media (ISM) can — and does — impact the bottom line. To better understand the value of social media in the workplace, APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald recently surveyed 1,000 U.S. employees, and built a model that quantifies the factors that characterize effective programs and the impact on core business drivers.

Some significant findings include:

• 58% of employees would rather work at a company that uses ISM effectively, and 86% would refer others for employment
• 60% of employees say use of internal social media demonstrates innovation
• 61% of employees say their companies’ social media tools help them collaborate

Read the full story. And while you’re there be sure to check out the whitepaper on “Harness the Power of Internal Social Media.”

Welcome to our Who’s Who list of companies who specialize in Social HR technology.

Are you in HR technology and wondering what options you have in software vendors? Or are you wondering what technology companies are transforming HR into more social functions? Then look no further. The list below has been collected from a couple of online sources as well as from our own research. The companies are listed in alphabetical order, but sortable by product solution. If you feel a company has been listed incorrectly or if you are a representative of the company and wish to modify your information, please contact us.

Solution categories:

• Employee Engagement – Employee surveys, opinions
• e-Learning – Learning management, talent development
• HCM Solution – Human capital management system that offers an overall solution
• People Management – Workforce analytics, case management, succession planning
• Recruitment – Acquiring talent, candidate search, applicant tracking
• Total Rewards – Reward & recognition, performance management, benefits
• Talent Management – Staffing solutions

Sources:
HR Tech Conference, Expo List, http://www.hrtechconference.com/expo/index_HRT_expo.html
Top 10 HCM Software Vendors, Business-Software.com/HCM

SHRM released its Future Insights Report on the Top Trends for HR according to SHRM’s HR Subject Matter panel.  This report highlights key HR-related topics and trends, as seen by subject matter experts from SHRM’s Special Expertise Panels. These trends are a valuable resource for any HR professional interested in seeing what issues HR subject matter experts believe will have the biggest impact on the workplace today and in the years ahead.

The report is broken down into key categories for HR, with each area having about 10 top trends. The trends indicate a promising revolution to the traditional role of  HR in the organization and how organizations interact with employees and HR’s important role in this change. Of note, however, is the distressing (but not all that  surprising to read) insight that technology and social media are seen as becoming more of a negative influence on workplace civility, manners, company information, privacy, business writing and etiquette. And their use is seen as increasing opportunities and avenues for harassment.

The full report is available here.

Here are some highlights from other key categories:

Employee Engagement

• HR is seeing the importance of being high-touch in a high-tech world and is increasing efforts to maintain and enhance employee engagement.
• As companies and workplaces change with economic, social, technological and other demographic shifts, HR is becoming more instrumental in facilitating effective change management and integrating culture as a regular duty as opposed to a special project.
• HR has seen the need to increase efforts in building trust between employees and the company, especially when lack of trust is not based on one specific incident or a situation specific to the employee. Companies have forgotten that employees matter.

Employee Relations

• Effective employee relations practices are becoming essential to business continuity in the context of possible natural or other unforeseen disasters.
• HR continues to develop an acute sensitivity to the impact of the external environment on the workforce and the business as a whole. In that context, effective employee relations practices are becoming increasingly important as companies observe the link between employee engagement/satisfaction and productivity. Recognizing the importance of embedding effective employee relations practices in all HR disciplines will make HR more effective as a business and strategic partner.
• HR is increasing efforts toward workforce readiness now and in the future. As the economy changes, those currently in the workforce—especially the underemployed—are becoming more of a focus for HR. That is, HR is determin­ing whom their organizations can—or want to—retain once the economy has turned around while keeping an eye on the possible overall talent loss as international workforces expand.
• Managing multiple generations in the workplace is not the issue some thought it would have been. Baby Boomers are not leaving in masses, and they have shown that they can work with Gen X and Gen Y; generations in the workplace isn’t an area where HR professionals are spending their time.

• User experience and ease of use are becoming significantly more important to employees when it comes to HR technology solutions.
• One-size-fits-all solutions are decreasing in popularity and effectiveness, given the increasing diversity and complexity of issues affecting HR departments.
• Employees are increasingly expecting a more integrated digital experience when it comes to their interactions with HR (e.g. single sign-on, one-stop shopping).
• Employees are increasingly expecting their HR departments to provide mobile access to core HR functions.
• Social media tools are increasingly becoming an integral component of virtually all HR functions, including employee relations, benefits management, and training and development.
• HR less frequently views its role in social media as a policing function and more as a means of helping its organizations leverage social media for maximum employee engagement.
• HR departments are gaining more autonomy and flexibility in making technology decisions that affect their work.
•  HR departments are increasing their reliance on video conferencing as well as helping their organizations adopt this technology in appropriate ways.
• Software as a service as well as cloud-based software solutions are increasingly becoming the preferred direction for HR technology.
•  HRIS solutions are increasingly offering integration with social media tools such as LinkedIn.

About the Special Expertise Panels’ Trends

As part of the thought leadership pillar within the SHRM strategic plan, Special Expertise Panel members act as thought leaders whose input creates pathways for SHRM’s thought leadership within the profession and among a wider business audience. The lists of key trends the panels produce make use of these experts’ insights to uncover a wide range of HR-related trends. These lists assist SHRM in creating forward-looking information and content for our members in forums such as the online HR Focus Areas, research articles, reports and surveys, and through media and outreach efforts.

I have a friend who works in a call center here in Columbus, OH. She is someone who’s not only passionate about her job, but also about having a voice and affecting change to improve her teams’ functions. But her greatest challenges to feeling included in impacting / changing company processes are related to the working environment itself: with the exception of a half hour lunch and two 15-minute breaks, she must be on the phone all day long making conversation with other colleagues impossible, and 2) opportunities to express opinions with other team members or suggest changes are limited to monthly team meetings. Neither of which are conducive to driving a culture of social, human interaction.

It’s hard enough to drive culture and drive engagement in the standard corporate environment, but imagine what it must be like to drive interaction and engagement in an environment where employees are separated and siloed as a requirement of the job. Call centers have a workplace setting that differs greatly from those of corporate, so I’ve always appreciated the diligence of contact (call) center employees and have wondered how it’s possible to drive (and enable) engagement, interaction and productivity when the basic functions of the job requires employees to be connected to their phones and computers their entire work day. From my meager understanding of the contact center environment, performance metrics are based on call quality, length and ability to wrap the calls as quickly as possible within government or corporate regulations… and performance numbers are scrutinized on a daily basis.

Because of these performance expectations, it can be difficult to keep contact center employees motivated and challenged on a daily basis — and to include all employees with major changes in the company. Because the work environment can be fairly regimented, employees may feel intimidated to voice their opinions. They often feel that offering suggestions is a waste of time because no one will do anything about it, which, in turn, makes them feel hopeless and unmotivated. And if no one cares how the employees feel or make an effort to listen, then why would they want to do their best to make the company as successful as it can be?

And the thought crosses my mind… if your front line contact center employees are given a voice with external customers, why wouldn’t you empower them to have a voice within the organization?

Give your front line a voice in process improvement for long term change that impacts culture, performance and morale.

In the most recent issue of Contact Center Pipeline, Natasha Gonzalez, Team Lead, Contact Center Operations, Wyndham Consumer Finance, Inc., shares how Wyndham senior leaders decided to implement changes to make contact center employees’ concerns a priority and to ensure that they know that their opinions are valued. They developed a plan to engage frontline agents in process improvement, and empowering employees by making them an essential part of the company’s decisions and goals; thereby allowing them to take ownership and responsibility of their own work.

Some highlights of the article:

• Identify Staff Pain Points – use the results of your employee opinion survey to conduct sessions with frontline supervisors and team leads to discuss the most common concerns and issues, and working with all departments to rank the issues and create a change plan.
• Use Six Sigma Tools to Improve Processes – Use an X-Y matrix, also known as a cause-and-effect matrix, which is a Six Sigma tool that allows a team to identify performance gaps and areas of improvement. This methodology removes subjectivity so that employees feel they are being scored fairly and accurately.
• Implementing Change and Training New Processes – As part of the overall change plan and communications strategy, allow the team leads or agents who participated in the discussions to present the new process to their peers. Use these same team leads to help conduct training sessions on the new process and make sure that management is involved as well.
• A Continuous Culture of Improvement – After a period of six months, hold follow-up discussions to gauge how the new process has impacted employee morale.

Do social technologies fit in?

One of the benefits to the natural synergy of a workplace environment is the ability to not only socialize but to also learn and glean knowledge from either other. In the absence of that, what do you do? Do social technologies fit in? It’d be interesting to learn whether or not there are contact centers who have successfully deployed collaboration sites so employees can connect with each other given that the natural environment prevents them from effectively doing so — either because they must be connected to the phone and call center system at all times or because it’s too unproductive to do so as it takes away from the ability to be ready for the next call that pops up in queue. Even call center employees should feel that they have an impact within their organizations and the company itself should work to provide an environment where employees have an opportunity to learn from their greatest resource: each other.

If you’re interested in this and other topics related to call centers, I encourage you to subscribe to Contact Center Pipeline. I actually found out about them because they asked if they could use my collection of employee engagement stats within their latest issue for its “Thought You Should Know” series.

Cheers,

Elizabeth

A long time ago, a former boss gave me some sound advice: Seek first to understand, Then to be understood.

Do you recognize it? I call it the Talking Stick rule, but some of you might recognize it as Habit 5 of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People“.

I love the whole purpose of this phrase. To understand and to be understood. And what better mission for any internal communicator? It’s easy to go “through the motions” of listening, selectively hearing only “certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the meaning entirely. So why does this happen? Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc.” (Stephen R Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

Likewise, in internal communications, business communicators tend to selectively hear their employees — and this is expressed through how we deliver and filter content based on business needs as opposed to employee needs.

Employees are feeling increasingly overloaded with information, which negatively affects their satisfaction with communication. Although employees report feeling informed about key business issues, they’re not sure how these issues relate to the work that they do every day.

It’s time to put the the talking stick back into the hands of your employees.

In today’s world, I don’t think that internal communications is overlooked — but I believe it needs to be more finely tuned. “Developing sound internal communication processes and evaluating these processes on a regular basis is the same as making sure your car runs smoothly and is serviced regularly.  If the many different pieces of your car do not fit smoothly together, you will not get where you are going very quickly, if you get there at all.  Similarly, if the people that make up your organization do not work together effectively, your will not achieve your objectives as  fast, if at all.  An effective internal communication strategy is the key to ensuring a cohesive organization focuses on achieving its goals and objectives.” (Civius.org, Internal Communications Toolkit).

All companies need effective, long-term internal communication that is maintained with the use of different success techniques. Using the right strategies, policies and modern technologies are important ways to build stronger communication links between the organization and your employees.

Team Bond

Clearly laid-out internal communication policies will boost the overall morale of employees and improve their workload. Employees that go to face-to-face meetings regularly and actively collaborate with their colleagues will get more work done as opposed to doing all their tasks separately. Employees that have a good idea of the company’s current and future goals should share tips with each other and function more as a unit. An effective internal communications scheme can increase the focus and motivation of your workforce.

Goals

Internal communication is important for a company that wants to set goals and maintain a certain identity. A business has to make a list of goals and strengths before dealing with customers or stakeholders. Not only do employees have a desire to know where the company plans to head in a certain time span, but they also need to understand how these goals are tied to their day-to-day lives.

Seek First to Understand…

Part of the problem is that communication, in its current form, is not designed to meet the needs of its employee audience. Instead, it’s shaped to appeal to our internal clients — senior executives. This means that communication to employees is more often than not written in language that is more suitable to your senior leadership team or board of directors: strategic big-picture pronouncements supported by a lot of data.

For example, last year, my company gave “life event scenarios” (e.g., having a baby) to a group of HR Business Partners and asked them to find the corresponding content on the Intranet site. Only a small number of them were able to efficiently find the content. The biggest reason? Because the content was organized to meet business need rather than understanding the perspective of the employee. To see if this is the case at your company, run a quick reading-level test of your communication. If most content is at the 12th-grade level—with complex sentences, long words and many complicated terms— then there is the chance some employees may not understand your communication.

Employees don’t want to reject communication — they just resent how it is now prepared. Employees want information, but only if it’s fresh, candid and personally relevant. They want to learn about the company, but they want that information presented in context, relating to what’s going on in the world, to what customers tell them and to the work they do every day. 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. (Davis & Co, Can Social Media Revitalize Employee Communication)

… Then to be Understood

Once you understand what your employees’ need, then you have define the best ways to get your business goals to be understood.  You will have to figure out the communication methods of the employees that work best for them. Significant factors that influence delivery style include age, education and work style. Employers will have to look at current problems and request advice from employees. Basic communication steps are important for employees such as effective listening, relevant questioning and feedback. So how do you balance understanding with being understood?

What’s in your toolkit?

Every successful internal communications plan needs a framework. Components of this framework should include your business goals, employee needs and be flexible for change management / business transformation. It should also standardize your communication methods as well as define your delivery channels based on available technology and measurement tools. The goal of your toolkit is to help improve efficiency and effectiveness through processes that create a cohesive organizational culture. If you need some direction, then check out this Internal Communications Toolkit from Civius.org.

Reshape current communication programs

In reshaping your current programs, does that mean you must also adopt social media? Not necessarily (for now anyway). But you should also realize that, in general, we do not communicate the same way we used to and social media engages employees in ways that traditional programs cannot.

While in some ways, you will be able enhance your current programs with a social layer, in other ways you will need to look at  totally revolutionizing your internal communication so that social media becomes a core strategy that changes the role of employees from spectators to active participants.

• Employ communication channels that solve a business need
  Both employees and employers have needs to meet. Employees have families, events and outside work activities they consider important. Organizations have products and services to deliver to customers and obligations to investors and stockholders. One of my biggest rec0mmendations to any client is to make sure that you are reshaping your current program to solve for a specific business need. That is, don’t just implement social technology for the sake of doing it. It would be better to take a year to diligently assess your needs and the proper social platform that becomes highly utilized rather than launch something in three months that doesn’t fit a business or employee need and consequently doesn’t get utilized. There is no win nor ROI in that for anyone.

• Create an intranet that employees S.E.E.K (Social  interactivity, Enterprise collaboration, Employee Engagement, Knowledge management)
  Employers should create an intranet system so employees can exchange information quickly and effectively. Since many companies prevent access to emails and certain websites, intranets work to connect staff members in a fast, authorized way. A company can also strengthen communication strategies, especially during the onboarding process.For the U.S.-based consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, social media took hold because it responded to a compelling employee need: making connections with other employees. In a firm of 46,000 employees, many of whom spend a considerable amount of time at client locations, it’s not practical to hang around the water cooler to network. In fact, 25 percent of employees who were leaving the company cited the sense of isolation as a primary reason for their departure.Whether you’re like Deloitte and building a complete social intranet, or if you’re still stuck with the one you have, there are methods in which you can create an intranet where employees can learn, plan and do their personal and work lives.

• Use social technologies but understand that social media is a moving target
  So much of the paralysis surrounding social media is based on the fact that communicators feel they not only have to choose the right application but also have to make it work right away (no glitches, high usage, etc.). After all, part of the reason that the employee communication programs have become stagnant is because there’s an expectation for them to be perfect: no errors and no angst.But social media requires a different mindset. It’s evolutionary. It starts small and gradually builds an audience. It morphs, often in unexpected directions. (Davis & Co, Can Social Media Revitalize Employee Communication)

Internal communication procedures involve sharing communication methods within a company of leaders and employees. Developing the right communication methods is crucial to maintaining long-term success. BusinessInsurance.org has resources that can help business improve their services and reliability. Internal communication is just one way they can reduce confusion and improve the output of employees and leaders.

Follow these guidelines and utilize these resources, and you will find that you, as a organization, employ the rules of the Talking Stick. That you seek first to understand your employees so that your business goals can then be understood.