Social Media and Employee Communications

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Social Media such as YouTube, Google Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and Twitter are revolutionizing the way employers communicate with their employees on a host of issues and topics. Employers wanting to increase the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts turn to YouTube and Facebook. Employers wanting to communicate the latest product information, changes in benefit plans or promote employee affiliation add Myspace or Facebook links to their intra-net sites. Cannot afford large-scale mass employee meetings, considered about the high cost of video distribution consider positing to YouTube. Want to have a running dialog with employees, start writing a blog.

The official web site for the US government has links for YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. General Motors has links for YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Ford has links for YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Organizations are reaching out and connecting with customers, clients, and suppliers; so shouldn’t they reach out to their employees? They are! In the current “Attention Age”, employers are looking for every opportunity to engage, inform, and communicate with their job applicants, current and former employees. Monarch Airlines, a U.K. airline specializing in low-cost flights uses “social media” to communicate with hundreds of flight and cabin crews, as well as ground employees stationed at multiple airport locations and branch offices. Monarch plans to use these new channels of communications to coordinate a wide range of team meetings, training sessions, and executive-employee interactions.

 

It would be expected that large, high-tech progressive organizations would employ the latest communications methods. However, with the media technology available on Youtube, anyone with a basic video camera, even a cell phone camera, and inexpensive editing software can produce, edit and distribute a video within a few minutes. Forget the editing, post it raw. In a professional video production world were cost are in the thousands of dollars per finished production minute, Youtube presents an attractive alternative. In a world were employee are working remotely, on the move 24/7; social media is cable of delivering up to date training, product roll out information, and corporate messages over numerous devices from desk-tops to cell phones. Concerned about company proprietary property? Software applications exist to secure access to those with the authority to access it either on the internet or a corporate intranet.

 

As with any communications, identifying and addressing the audiences and constructing the messages are far more important than the channel used to deliver the message. We have all seen glossy four-color print media that had very little substance to them. Or, the high cost video production that was little more than stilted taking corporate heads. The same developmental efforts and planning that would be required for a print or video production is required for YouTube, Google Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and Twitter, just scaled down by a factor of 10.