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

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.

Hello, Boris, you AND me, Pitstop – it’s just some of the names from various corporate intranets.

Some companies give their internal portals just a name. Other companies choose to give their internal portals a complete identity. There are some companies who go the simple route and just call it what it is: Intranet. If you are a company who still operates on multiple portals such as the corporate intranet, the HR portal, and the collaboration portal.. the name becomes that much more important in helping your employees distinguish one portal from another. Coming from a corporate background where all the companies I’ve worked for have had a “branded” intranet, it still surprises me to hear many companies out there don’t. Personally, I like a branded intranet. It’s an easy way to strengthen corporate culture, support brand identity and make your intranet a “destination” not just a “site.”

It’s always interesting to know what companies end up naming their internal portals. I will tell you that the MOST frequent terms I came across are:

• My[company name]
• _________ Connect
• _________ Net

It’s in this spirit that I’m posting this list of companies and the names of their internal portals based on my own research as well as the fantastic list available on Intranet Matters. If you would like to add or correct your company listing, please let me know. If you would like your company removed, definitely let me know. Otherwise, please enjoy and I hope this is valuable to your intranet research. (Many thanks to Miri McDonald for initially requesting this list.)

In our “Social Knows” series, we sniff out and compile statistics and research regarding workplace / workforce management, human resources and employee engagement. The goal is to provide you with the background knowledge necessary to support your own recommendations, findings and strategies. Submissions always welcomed.

UPDATE: There is a new Employee Engagement Statistics post which includes mobile workforce stats (~Elizabeth, 11/20/2011)

Human Capital and Corporate Culture

• The lost productivity of actively disengaged employees costs the US economy $370 BILLION annually. (Gallup)
• In February, June, and October of 2010, the number of employees voluntarily quitting surpassed the number fired or discharged. (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
• 70% of engaged employees indicate they have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs; only 17% of non-engaged employees say the same. (Wright Management)
• 78% would recommend their company’s products of services, against 13% of the disengaged. (Gallup)
• Engaged employees advocate their company or organization – 67% against only 3% of the disengaged. (Gallup)
• From a global sample of 60 corporations the Corporate Leadership Council found that over 80% of senior human resources (HR) professionals agreed that employee engagement was a high priority for 2009 and 40% claimed it had become more of a priority over the last year. Senior private sector HR managers believe that the top challenge they face now is maintaining employee engagement.
• 86% of engaged employees say they very often feel happy at work, as against 11% of the disengaged. 45% of the engaged say they get a great deal of their life happiness from work, against 8% of the disengaged. (Gallup)
• Less than 50% of chief financial officers appear to understand the return on their investments in human capital. (Accenture)
• 75% of leaders have no engagement plan or strategy even though 90% say engagement impacts on business success. (ACCOR)

Source: Human Resources Employee Engagement Statistics

Employee Innovation and Management

• Higher levels of engagement are strongly related to higher levels of innovation. 59% of engaged employees say that their job brings out their most creative ideas against only 3% of disengaged employees. (Gallup)
• Based on survey findings from approximately 1,500 managers throughout the UK, where respondents identified the prevailing management style of their organization as innovative, 92% of managers felt proud to work there.
• From 2008 – 2009 the numbers saying their manager supported new ways of doing things declined from 51% to 40 per cent; the numbers reporting that managers were encouraging them to develop their own ideas declined from 51% to 43%; and those reporting their manager encouraged them to try new ideas out declined from 48% to 38%. (CLC Research)
• Only 29% of UK employees believed their senior managers were sincerely interested in their well‐being; only 31% thought their senior managers communicated openly and honestly; only 3% thought their managers treated them as key parts of the organization and no fewer than 60% felt their senior managers treated them as just another organizational asset to be managed. (Towers Watson)
• Only 51% of staff felt they were involved or consulted on decisions that might affect their work area, team or department; only 27% thought senior managers involved staff in important decisions. (NHS Survey)
• Only 40% of employees are satisfied with relations between managers and employees in their organization. (Kingston Business School)
• 39% of employees feel senior management does not exhibit attitudes and behaviors that reflect they care about the wellbeing of their employees. (Towers Watson)
• 75% of people voluntarily leaving jobs don’t quit their jobs; they quit their bosses. (Roger Herman)

Source: Human Resources Employee Engagement Statistics

Workplace Satisfaction

• Out of 10,914 workers surveyed by Blessing White, only 31% are engaged
• Fewer than 1 in 3 employees worldwide (31%) are engaged. Nearly 1 in 5 (17%) are actually disengaged. Engagement levels vary by region from 37% in India to 17% in China.
• Despite the economic recession, more employees are looking for opportunities outside of their organization than they were in 2008, suggesting that 2011 will be a challenging year for retention (and a hot market for firms to attract top talent).
• Trust in executives can have more than twice the impact on engagement levels than trust in immediate managers does.
• Employees worldwide who know their managers as “people” are more likely to be engaged
• The higher up in the organization you go, the more likely you are to be engaged
• Engagement levels are higher among older employees and people in positions of power and authority
• Engagement increases with organizational tenure
• Engagement surveys without visible follow-up action may decrease engagement levels, suggesting that organizations think twice before flipping the switch on measurement without 100% commitment for action planning based on the results.

Source: Blessing White, 2011 Employee Engagement Report

• Worker satisfaction. Research conducted by Time magazine in 2010 indicated that less than half of American workers (45%) are satisfied with their jobs. This is the lowest percentage since 1987 and is an indication that U.S. employers have a lot of work ahead of them to undo the effects of the economic downturn and deteriorating employee attitudes.
• Turnover. According to a Gallup poll, companies with large numbers of dissatisfied workers experience greater absenteeism and lower productivity. The most telling figure was the amount of turnover these employers experience which was 51% higher than their peers. Effective engagement strategies should target on-the-job satisfaction as a way to reduce turnover and maintain smooth workflows.
• Job security. More than half of U.S. workers feel their jobs are less secure now than they were a year ago. Approximately 70% of workers who feel their jobs are secure report happiness at work, but half of the workers who feel their jobs are in jeopardy are dissatisfied with their jobs. The takeaway from these statistics is that job security and employee satisfaction are connected, even though many workers are only hanging onto their jobs for a paycheck.

Source: Employee Engagement statistics by gaebler.com

• 72% of US workers are not engaged in their work. Defined as essentially sleep walking throughout their day. (Gallup)
• 1 in 4 workers intend to jump ship within a year. (Telework Research Network)
• 18% of dis-engaged employees actually undermine their co-workers’ success. (Gallup)

Source: “What makes a happy vs. sad (disengaged) worker”, Citrix

Productivity

• Higher employee engagement resulted in a 50% reduction in reportable accidents from 18% to 9% over a two year period. (Babcock Marine Clyde)
• More than 66% of those managers who reported that they were motivated at work also claimed high productivity levels (defined as more than 90%). Only 15% who were motivated experienced low levels of productivity (defined as less than 70%). (CMI)
• Those companies with a highly engaged workforce improved operating income by 19.2% over a period of 12 months, whilst those companies with low engagement scores saw operating income decline by 32.7% over the same period. (Towers Watson)
• Engaged employees in the UK take an average of 2.69 sick days per year; the disengaged take 6.19. (Gallup)

Source: Human Resources Employee Engagement Statistics

Change Management

• Engagement and involvement are critical in managing change at work; nine out of ten of the key barriers to the success of change programs are people related. (PWC)
• Only 24% of private sector employees believe change is well managed in their organizations (15% in the public sector). (Ipsos MORI)

Source: Human Resources Employee Engagement Statistics

Benefits and Compensation

• Retirement worries loom large. Only 43 percent of employees say they’re doing enough to prepare for retirement. That’s down from 47 percent in 2005.
• Benefits programs don’t get the raves they once did. Some 68 percent of employees say their benefits are good or very good, down from 76 percent in 2005.
• Health care in particular is seen as less generous. Only 59 percent are satisfied with their health benefits, down from 66 percent.
• Pay isn’t great either. Just 53 percent are satisfied with their base pay, down from 58 percent in 2005.

Source: Survey: Half of Workers Just Don’t Care

Rewards and Recognition

• 69% of employees would work harder if they were better recognized
• 78% of U.S. workers said being recognized motivates them in their job
• 49% of employees said they would leave their current job for a company that clearly recognized employees for their efforts and contributions
• Among respondents who stated they plan to search for a new job this year, only 24% are satisfied with the level of recognition they receive at work. Conversely, 63% of employees who have no plans of leaving are satisfied with their level of recognition.
• An overwhelming majority (84 percent) of all 630 respondents preferred a wide choice of gift cards as the primary reward mechanism.
• 65 percent of employees satisfied in their roles said they would also work harder if they were better recognized at work.
• 78 percent said being recognized motivates them in their job

Source: Workforce Mood Tracker survey (630 global corporate respondents)

Profitability

• Companies with high levels of employee engagement improved 19.2% in operating income while companies with low levels of employee engagement declined 32.7% (Towers Watson)
• If organizations increased investment in a range of good workplace practices which relate to engagement by just 10%, they would increase profits by $2,400 per employee per year. (IES/Work Foundation Report)
• Increased employee engagement was accompanied by a 12% increase in customer satisfaction and significant double‐digit revenue and margin growth over the past three years. (Serco Study)
• Engaged organizations grew profits as much as three times faster than their competitors. They report that highly engaged organizations have the potential to reduce staff turnover by 87% and improve performance by 20%. (Corporate Leadership Council)
• A 1% increase in employee commitment can lead to a monthly increase of 9% in sales. (IES)

General Statistics for Human Resource Professionals

• 24% of team members say they don’t see their managers enough
• 58% of team are worried about their benefits
• 84% of managers don’t know how to accurately measure their team members
• 32% of team doesn’t know their next move in the company
• 32% of adult US workers listen to music at work on an MP3 player or similar device; 79% say it improves their job satisfaction and/or productivity
• 46% of new hires leave their jobs within the first year.
• 63% of those who do not feel treated with respect intend to leave within two years
• 56% of women feel that at one time or another they have been disadvantaged in the workplace because of their gender

Source: Human Resources Employee Engagement Statistics

As we have adopted social media into our organizations, we’ve seen many instances where it has become necessary to discipline employees because of their behavior on social networking sites due to the negative light that behavior has shed on a company. It goes without saying that because of these behaviors, companies have scrambled to draft social media policies to minimize these occurrences and to manage employee performance overall. In many circumstances, actions and policies are put into place to protect the employee as much as the company.

But aside from social behavior, social feedback is another component of social media that is becoming a growing trend in its impact on performance management –  using the comments and / or criticisms a company receives on social networking sites to manage performance.

Have we reached a place within social media adoption where a company can  (or should) use solicited (or unsolicited) comments, remarks or feedback as a basis for disciplinary action or to affect a single employee’s performance plan. And is social feedback any different from a comment card or if someone called in and complained?

If you’re a company who manages a Facebook page, you undoubtedly have received negative as much as positive feedback on your wall. As we all well know, Twitter is often the “911 button” for disgruntled consumers. As a company, what do you do when you receive social feedback that refers to a specific employee by name? Or perhaps not by name, but with enough data mining, you can trace the situation back to a particular employee?

For example:

You are in the restaurant industry and you receive negative feedback on Yelp or Foursquare, or even an application such as OpenTable. The review speaks to poor service and to poor food quality. Is it fair to discipline the employee who served that table?

OR

Your company receives a comment on your Facebook wall that identifies a customer service representative by first name and speaks to the bad experience they had with this employee. Is it fair to include this feedback in the employee’s performance review?

Part of becoming a social workplace means adapting your internal and external policies and processes to mitigate risk  in social environments. But culture is an important, and essential, component to an effective social workplace, and it’s important to weigh the risks of using social feedback in your performance management process against the impact this could have on how employees view themselves and their performance within your company.

There’s a lot a grey in this area and companies might be tempted to approach with caution or to assess situations on a case-by-case basis. But at some point your company will have to take a definitive stand to better equip you and your employees for these situations. With this on mind, here are some considerations and suggestions.

Considerations:

• Why should one single employee be held accountable for a situation that could have potentially involved a collective of peers? Doesn’t this detract from the essence of team collaboration and responsibility?
• To hold an employee accountable for actions they themselves did is one thing, but is it fair to hold an employee accountable for someone’s opinion or what could be the result of consumer angst against not a particular employee, but rather, the company?
• A good social media policy protects both the employee and the company. So does integrating social feedback into your performance process truly protect both the company and the employee, or are you really just seeking to protect the company?
• This kind of change in policy should also be covered in your code of conduct and other related policies, and doing so means that you’re not only making changes in how you manage performance but that you are making changes that influence your corporate culture as well.

Suggestions:

• Determine whether actions regarding social feedback will be on a case-by-case basis or if it will be a general policy.
• KEEP CONSISTENT. Social feedback isn’t any different from a comment card or if someone called your company directly to complain. Look at how you treat those situations and apply the same policies.
• If you’re going to use social feedback as a performance management tool, then you need to make sure that you’re collecting feedback from ALL social networking platforms where your company has a presence as opposed to one specific one.
• APPLY CONSISTENTLY. If you discipline (or reward) one employee based on feedback, then you must apply this to all your employees.
• If you use negative feedback as a means to discipline (or penalize) your employees then you should also recognize them when POSITIVE feedback is received.
• Prepare yourself to respond to employee confusion or backlash should a particular situation arise and the employee feels that they were singled out and / or they feel that the situation involved more than just themselves. How will you handle this?
• Use the negative social feedback as a learning opportunity on how to better improve your customer service or costumer management rather as an opportunity to discipline one single employee.
• Modify your social media policy to include guidelines on why social feedback is considered a valuable component to employee performance.
• If your company chooses to incorporate social feedback, make sure that you include this into your onboarding process where you review social media engagement guidelines.
• Require that all existing employees acknowledge this modification to your social media policy and have them sign the agreement again.

Has your organization considered using social feedback as part of your company’s performance management process? Do you have any other considerations or suggestions? I’m by no means a performance management expert. These are high level thoughts that I have considered myself. If you are a performance management expert, by all means, please provide your thoughts on this topic.

I believe one of the best skills for an effective blogger is someone who fervently researches and reads — finding not only inspiration for content but also supporting facts and figures. A lot of people ask me what sites or blogs inspire my own content for The Social Workplace. After spending some time compiling this list, I realized that I was overlooking the very resource that I used when I was first started looking: Alltop.com.

As an enthusiast within the social media space, you will inevitably find Alltop’s topics on collaboration, enterprise or general social media of significant use.  However, as my own research became more focused towards internal technologies and employee engagement, I found that these topics were either too broad or slightly off focus (e.g, the enterprise topic is more about infrastructure not strategy). What I found I needed was a topic that listed blog posts and articles related to social technologies that bring about the essence of the internal social workplace — employee engagement, intranets, productivity, knowledge management, social learning. Therein lies, corporate social media.

Imagine my delight, then, when L.P. “Neenz” Faleafine at Alltop.com accepted my proposal to create a new topic category that was specific to this area. In fact, the original intent for my “List of Social Intranet, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Engagement, and HR Technology Experts” was created as my first steps towards compiling a list for Neenz to populate this category.

I’m extremely excited to say that this list is now live: http://corporate-social-media.alltop.com/

If you’re as excited as I am about this new topic page, please do me the favor of the following:

1. Check out the new topic page. Again, the link is: http://corporate-social-media.alltop.com/
2. Evangelize it on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn
3. Please, please thank Neenz for his hard work on getting this created for me (@Neenz)

If you find that your own blog is not present on this topic page, please submit it via the Alltop submission form.

Winding down from my presentation at The Conference Board’s Social Media for Human Resources seminar, there is one important takeaway that resonates with me: the importance of employee engagement and trust. Engagement is employees’ connection to their work, organization, leaders, managers, clients or customers, performance, and results. On the more human side, it’s also the degree to which employees are willing to go the extra mile,  display loyalty to their company before, after and during core business hours; and display satisfaction with their work and workplace. “Organizations need engaged employees at all levels (leaders, managers, staff) to achieve results significant for the organization” (Business Exchange: Employee Engagement).

During lunch, Erin Arcario (@earcario) and Nicole Maddox from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc, a couple of very enthusiastic conference attendees, and I actively discussed the benefits and risks of an organization’s social media involvement; the consensus being that the benefits outweighed the risks. One of those key benefits being that social media offers an additional platform in which to engage employees — internally and externally.

Considering that upwards of 50% of companies block access to social networking sites from the office, it’s clear that employee engagement requires a leap of faith… almost blind trust, if you will. And in a time where social media has made trust such an important element in successful business /employee relationships, an engaged employee is more essential than ever.

In fact, as one conference hashtag follower noted, “@CincyRecruiter If companies do not trust what their employees will do online, why did they hire them in the first place? #tcbsm4hr.” [MNHeadhunter Paul DeBettignie].

INDEED.

Growing up as a child, one of my greatest angsts was how my parents believed that my behavior, good or bad, was a direct reflection on them. Now that I myself, am a parent,  this statement has a whole new, and more appreciative, meaning for me. The same goes for your company. Your actions, whether intentional or unintentional, absolutely reflect on your company. And like my parents, you eventually have to trust your employees to “do the right thing.” Yes, sometimes there are blunders, but there are even more successes.

Your goal, as a leader within your organization, is to make sure your employees are engaged enough to understand and manage risk. In doing that, you will find your greatest return. Consider this. Engaged employees:

• stay with their employers longer, report higher levels of satisfaction and make significant contributions.
• present less risk because they not only understand, but also care that their participation in social media can potentially reflect on their company.
• understand how their day-to-day work directly contributes to overall company goals and priorities.

According to the ISR Global Engagement Study of 664K employees, there is a 52% gap in operating income between high engagement and low engagement companies. So the question isn’t really can you afford to engage your employees but rather can you afford not to? If you’re not quite feeling this in your pocket yet or not yet appreciating how significant employee engagement is to your company’s bottom-line, you should try HR Solutions’ Return on Engagement calculator. With their calculator, you can determine the financial impact engagement can have on your organization and see the savings that a focus on engagement can yield.

As a final thought, I leave you with this… Employee engagement is not a competitive advantage anymore it is a basic organizational requirement to achieve results. Your employees are already active participants in social media, so why not leverage the very platforms your employees use in order to get them passionate about your company, your values and culture, and your products and services.

Place trust in your employees and you will find  that your biggest return is an engaged employee who trusts you back.

Found this social media map from Aon Hewitt’s Inside. Great visual to generate ideas and vision for creating your own social media approach.

Not sure how to jump start your social media approach?

Download [Aon Hewitt's] social media map to identify the best opportunities. As a really good example of how to take the social media map and use it for your needs, see the example to the right which is from their recent social media workshop.

Join Aon’s LinkedIn group to share your map and ideas.

Also follow @AonHewittInside for continued social media insights.

Below is what’s intended to be a growing resource list of professionals, bloggers, enthusiasts and experts who focus on creating a social workplace through — but not necessarily limited to — collaborative technologies, corporate social media, intranets, employee engagement or HR technology. If you or your community (more than one contributing author) would like to be included, please submit your information via the contact form or by commenting below and we will be sure to include you.

Individuals

Communities / Companies

You probably know me … I’m the person you met at the airport, a conference or a networking event with whom you now share common interests. I’m the former colleague, high school or college friend with whom you now keep in touch. Or better yet, I’m the one you’ve never actually met in person, yet we know each other almost as well as if we had. People ask me all of the time: how do you do it? How do you meet so many people and sustain the relationship? And why do you care to? For me, the answer isn’t that hard or complex… and it’s most certainly not based solely on the fact that I’m extremely extroverted and needy (which I am).

I believe in connections — both online and offline. And social media has made all of this easier for me. Recently, a friend challenged me to tell him how I knew all of the friends I currently have on Facebook. He and I sat there and refreshed my profile page and each time he randomly chose someone from my friend’s list and asked me how I knew that person. I passed with flying colors. Was I lucky? Maybe. Am I someone who spends too much time on Facebook? More than likely.

I used to think relationships were much more linear: that people would come and go as you moved through each different phase of your life while only a lucky few would become close enough to experience all your life phases with you. With social media, there is no such thing as linear. It’s a tangley weave of connections that intersect and cross over each other the more you connect with friends and colleagues both past and present, and grows even more extensive as you bring more people in it.

I don’t live in a bubble. I’m well aware that, unfortunately, social media has had the opposite effect for some people: enabled walls and broken relationships. But I’m lucky to say that hasn’t been the case for me. Instead, social media did the opposite. It made 2010 the year of the friend in several impactful ways:

We started talking…

… while one or both of us were traveling or while we were networking at a conference. Admittedly, you were most likely forced to talk to me because I started talking to you first. But hey, all friendships have to start somewhere, right? By the end of our conversation, we had become friends on Facebook or connected on LinkedIn. I can’t tell you how many times, over this past year, that I met someone at what would have been a brief encounter, only to have connected to them on any number of social networks and been able sustain that friendship because of that platform.

You decided to follow me..

… or I started following you on Twitter — but who’s keeping track. Regardless, posts were tweeted and retweeted and… the rest is what they call history. In a turn of events, social media is what initially introduced me to you or you to me, and it was also the method in which information, knowledge, and personal quips were shared. But what began as a more professional or social connection developed into a solid friendship over time.

We met way back when…

… we were in high school (or journalism camp). Or college. Or we used to work together. We met in a previous lifetime. It wasn’t social media that introduced the relationship, but it has facilitated our ability to keep up on the personal and professional activities of each others’ lives. Social media has done this so efficiently, it almost begs the question: “who needs an actual reunion?”

So What Will 2011 Be?

Ever wonder what your online connections are like in person? I do. All the time. Not just the ones I’ve never met in person… but also the ones who I haven’t seen for many years. 2010 was the year for establishing friendships. Make 2011 the year for bridging those online friendships to offline ones (and vice versa, if you’re so inclined). So, go to a conference. Meet up with common interest groups. Arrange a get together with former colleagues or classmates. Visit a friend you haven’t seen in 23 years. Attend that dreaded 25 year reunion! Your friendships become much more meaningful when you know the offline person behind the online identity.

So when I reach out to you some time this year and say: “Hey, let’s meet or get together,” you’ll know I’m working on bridging the gap of my own friendships.

Many, many thank yous for your continuous support throughout 2010. I look forward to getting to know all of you better throughout 2011.

Big smiles,

Elizabeth