Engagement through social media

Traditionally, organisations have protected themselves with an impenetrable boundary of rules: employment contracts, standard operating procedures, decision-making processes and guidelines for participation.

However, with the rise of social media, businesses are facing a shift away from the familiar paradigm of interaction with their stakeholders. Organisations can no longer maintain a rigid separation between themselves and the outside world, and it may be other stakeholders, such as customers and the wider public, who determine the nature of their interactions.  

To realise the opportunities of social media, businesses need to continually review the way they engage with their stakeholders, both internal and external.

Organisations can use social media to do more with less by leveraging skills and capabilities both inside and outside the company and to encourage employee participation and therefore drive engagement.

Using social media to do more with less

The rise in social media provides opportunities for businesses to experiment with new ways of innovating and accessing skills, and delivering their products and services to reduce costs and/or increase revenues. For example: 

• ‘Crowdsourcing’ offers the opportunity of taking a function once performed by employees and sourcing it from a limitless network of people outside the organisation. For example, Best Buy, collaborating with Toshiba and HP, has developed laptops based on consumer feedback on batterylife, case and screen size and warranty.

• With ‘crowdsensing’, the public are used to monitor anything from broken streetlights to earthquakes. OpenStreetMap is a geographical database developed on a similar model to Wikipedia where volunteers “gather location data across the globe from a variety of sources such as recordings from GPS devices, from free satellite imagery or simply from knowing an area very well.

• ‘Cloud manufacturing’ allows organisations to access expertise and low cost resource, opening up new possibilities for research, development and manufacturing.

Using technology to secure employee engagement

Today’s leaner organisations cannot afford the financial burden associated with a disengaged workforce. Disengaged workers impact productivity, goal achievement and as a result, a company’s bottom line. They are less likely to be concerned with customer satisfaction and quality, and more likely to leave.

One of the easiest ways to achieve engagement is through participation: involvement of employees in joint activities, work-related or not. Companies can create communities using existing or purpose-built social media channels. They can also explore ‘recognition systems’ that show people how their work contributes to the organisation’s overall achievements, and encourages them to acknowledge the efforts of colleagues.  

Adapting management to the new paradigm

As the organisational business model adapts to the new porous boundaries resulting from social media, traditional management logic will also need to evolve. Companies will have to experiment, and to be pragmatic in their adoption of what works and reject what doesn’t.

To find out more about how PA can help you drive engagement through social media press the contact us now button.