This is part one of a two-part blog for the Institute for Public Relations Organizational Communication Research Center.

Social technologies such as blogging, chats, crowdsourcing, wikis, ratings, reviews, discussion forums, and even social gaming are transforming the company intranet from a transactional file-sharing server to an employee-driven communications network that is tightly connected to business performance. According to a 2012 McKinsey report entitled “The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies:”

  • $900 billion to $1.3 trillion is the annual value that could be unlocked by social technologies in four sectors: consumer products, retail financial services, manufacturing and professional services;
  • 3% share of companies that derive substantial benefit from social technologies across all stakeholders: customers, employees and partners;
  • 20-25% potential improvement possible in knowledge worker productivity.

Many companies are leveraging social technologies by incorporating them into existing intranets and then activating employees to engage internally in a more collaborative way. In addition, the social-enabled internal network helps employees learn how to communicate more effectively on social networking platforms externally. Essentially, everyone becomes a member of employee engagement internally, and a potential communicator for the company externally.

There are many benefits to a social-enabled enterprise. It can flatten the corporate hierarchy and break silos between departments and divisions so that information can flow more freely. This can make the company feel smaller and allow good ideas to quickly come from anywhere within the company. It can also make executives more approachable by taking them out from behind podiums at town hall meetings, formal e-mails or memos and putting them into the ongoing conversation with a large number of employees around the world. Finally, the social-enabled enterprise helps to increase productivity, share knowledge and translate the company culture into the virtual world.

If you want to consider an investment in the social-enabled enterprise you have to understand where your employee communications efforts stand today and where you want to go in the future. Here is a simple diagnostic tool to help determine at a high level where your company is today. Notice there is no mention of technology.

OCRC Blog 1

Once you understand where your organization stands you can then make the business case on how employee engagement will move an organization from transactional communications to a driving engine behind transforming the business. One way to do this is by developing a framework outlining why these types of services should be rolled out and how they can benefit the business, employees, partners, customers and other key stakeholders. The framework will be a living and flexible document, which provides a central structure for all internal communication activity. 

A social-enabled enterprise framework is owned by an internal, cross-functional team made up of professionals from various business units within the company who are charged with the following:

  • Defining goals for each of the main business areas;
  • Mapping internal communications activities aligning the activities with goals;
  • Developing key messages for each activity;
  • Profiling target audiences for each activity;
  • Identifying specific social technologies that are relevant for each audience;
  • Agreeing upon clear objectives to measure success;
  • Participating in monthly business unit reviews and quarterly committee reviews.

The purpose of this group is to be sure that employee engagement is tied to business performance.

 

Rachelle Spero is a Partner at Brunswick Group who specializes in online reputation management, social media strategy and digital storytelling.

 

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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