Organizations trading in the water cooler for social media

I recently attended Talk is Cheap 3.0, a social media networking event held at Centennial College and hosted by Social Media Group and the Corporate Communications and Public Relations department. The night was a great success, and I was fortunate to be involved not only in the planning of the event, but to be able to attend two sessions during the evening.

 Although it was difficult to choose which sessions to attend, I settled on one focusing on Social Media for Internal Audiences... who knew there was such a thing? Seeing as how most organizations have blocked sites like YouTube and Facebook so that employees cannot access them during the work day. 

The session was held by Amanda Laird from Canada Newswire and really opened my eyes to organizations can benefit from integrating social media within their internal systems. 

With technology constantly changing the way people search for, find, share and communicate information,  its not the communications content that needs to change but the tools through which those messages are distributed. Employees want to be communicated with, and more importantly, employees want to feel engaged.

Employee connection = employee engagement = employee happiness :o) 

So if you’re organization is still a little hesitant about integrating social media internally, consider the following:

1. Transparency is a beautiful thing, and social media allows companies to have real-time, authentic conversations with employees.
2. Social media knows no rank and thus allows all communications to flow from the top right to the very bottom, and side to side if need be. It also knows no physical boundaries and can be accessed across the world (as long as you’re logged in, of course)
3. Leadership teams who use social media to converse with employees are generally well liked and well read by employees. Employees like to know that their leadership cares enough to have a venue for conversing with them. So cover your bases, whether its Twitter, Yammer, a blog, wiki’s or podcasts, there is a tool for many - so make use of them!
4. Gen Y and younger Gen Xers are already used to the two-way communications that they really don’t pay attention to anything else. They give the most credit to the friends they text for information.
5. Social media is a fantastic recruiting tool! Companies who do not make use of this tool are often at a distinct disadvantage. 

So forget the water cooler and log on!