In his recent post, Canuckflack asks “what do internal comms have to offer in the face of self-assembling employee groups?” To paraphrase him, corporate communications are dead, at least in the traditional sense. As a member of the Corporate Communications team for a company myself, this is a bit hard, albeit possibly necessary, to say.
As he so aptly points out, we’ve been subjected to copy that has gone through the fine-tooth comb of corporate approval so many times it is often meaningless. As a result, employees have turned to social networking in order to interact and learn about their coworkers.
The actual corporate information about new procedures, training, and meetings that was intermingled with this social intrigue is now being left in the dust.
Is the choice, then, for corporate communications to go to where the employees are?
This raises a number of interesting problems. For one, I am not totally sure how employees will feel about being contacted by their company on a social networking site. It is one thing for employees to band together and create their group. In this case, I’m not totally sure if the “if you build it, they’ll come” mentality will work. I feel that too many employees would worry that, despite privacy settings, management would be able to spy on their online activities. For many (and with good reason), there is a divide between social areas and work areas, online and off.
There is also the management concern that if you sanction the use of social networking sites at work, productivity will drop. I’m sure that a huge number of employees are already checking Facebook during the day anyways (and can tell that they are based on the status updates, wall messages, and so on that I see from not only my colleagues but from friends who work at other companies). In this case, inserting a bit of corporate info into the loop certainly can’t be a bad thing.
If the decision was mine, utilizing social networking to disseminate corporate information would be the go. However, I feel that most companies are not there yet, and it will be some time before we see this kind of integration.
Are there any thoughts from the blogosphere on this issue? How would you feel if your company chose to communicate with you in this manner?
Tags: Canuckflack, Corporate Communication, Corporate Culture, productivity
I think there are actually three changes corporate communicators must make:
1- recognize that they can’t funnel and constrain the relationships developed among employees across the country, maybe in different buildings and countries
2- learn how to interact and exchange information with employees online
3- adapt to the reality that employees want to comment upon and even criticize the corporate communications distributed by the company. There should be a tool or a mechanism to develop an internal dialogue on corporate messages and priorities.
I agree with 1, 2 and 3…
Just stay off of Facebook…..if you want to engage your employees and hear what they have to say about your corp. communications, that’s great….but… based on discussions I’ve had with friends, reaching them through Facebook is an invasion of personal space. Risky stuff.
Very good points, gentlemen.
I especially agree with Colin’s third point.
However, Scotty, i disagree with you slightly. I agree that yes, reaching them through Facebook can be an invasion of personal space and that it is risky stuff, but it doesn’t have to be such an invasion.
Thanks for reading!
I’ve used Linked In, but to be honest, I haven’t seen any fruits of my participation in this tool. Rather when it comes to internal connections (inside a company) I believe that networking via wikis/and employee profiles on the wiki has actually boosted my productivity and sparked innovation. I can learn who knows what through both their profiles and contributions. I’ve been able to open up dialogs with people (as long as they are open) to help increase my understanding of their topics as well as share my expertise on my own. So in that sense social networking has improved my productivity as well as added to the body of the company’s knowledge.