Social media tools engage people and improve collaboration
In June 2008, Canam Group decided to start a Facebook page in anticipation of its tri-annual managers’ conference. About 200 employees at the Quebec construction company created profiles and were presented with different activities before the three-day event.
The first was a quiz assessing personality colours, which Canam used to sort people into “parties” for the opening night, as with an election (those who didn’t respond to the survey were labeled “independent”). The managers were also encouraged to post pictures as part of a contest.
“Our goal was to present social media to this top management and, after that, develop our intranet the (Web) 2.0 way, using Facebook… to show them how easy it is to use, to publish pictures, publish videos, use a forum,” said Nathalie Pilon, Canam’s electronic communications manager. “We showed them what social media is and it was a real success.”
Canam is now encouraging employees to use social media for business purposes. It resurrected a shelved intranet project and went on to launch other initiatives, including “CanamTube,” for internal purposes such as training or CEO speeches, and a Flickr account to publish pictures of construction projects.
In May, the company hopes to publish a “Canampedia,” similar to Wikipedia, providing a company lexicon that can be modified by employees. The content will be available in French and English and people can add more languages.
“Employees are asking for tools like that in the company,” said Pilon. “People are asking to be able to publish content, they want to see the same thing that they see outside in the company.”
Canam’s attitude is a rarity, according to a recent survey from Aon Consulting Canada. Despite the proliferation of social networks, rich media outputs and online collaboration tools, organizations have been slow to adopt the power of Web 2.0. Only 12 per cent use Facebook, Twitter or similar social networks to communicate with employees or recruit potential employees while 71 per cent restrict Internet usage at work.
“A lot of employers are not really maximizing the power of this kind of communication, mostly because of fear and the fact that, on their side, they may perceive it as a high risk because it’s unpredictable,” said Diane McElroy, senior vice-president and communications practice lead at Aon.
It’s clear there’s a giant gap between the workplace and people’s personal lives, said Ron Shewchuk, a corporate communications consultant in Vancouver.
“These new ways of communicating have woven themselves into the very fabric of our social existence and yet they have been very slow to be adopted in the workplace,” he said. “This is not something for geeks and teenagers. It really is time for the corporate world to start embracing these tools.”
Many employees are not fully engaged and Web 2.0 provides access to powerful tools of engagement, said Shewchuk.
“All these social media tools are built from the ground up, to engage people, to improve collaboration, to create a sense of community, and all of these things are what drive employee engagement and drive retention.”
If an employer limits or bans the use of these tools, most people will find another way.
“Why not actually sanction it and be able to control it, rather than just turning a blind eye to it?” he said.
That sentiment is backed up by a soon-to-be-released survey by Aon of 8,000 employees that found workers are already using Web 2.0 tools to get their jobs done, even if it’s not directly approved by the employer. This can involve setting up networks to seek co-worker feedback around problems or informal chat pages used by global workers. They find that more efficient than what their employer has, said McElroy.
“Employers are still using the very traditional means of communication and missing a huge potential of using social media in the workplace. And it has many benefits, because it’s more cost-effective, it reaches more people.”
Those companies that are using these tools are largely using them for recruitment purposes, found Aon. Canam has learned, for recruitment purposes, 2.0 media are not only a good idea but necessary, said Pilon.
“New people coming in the company ask for that, they go directly to the intranet,” she said.
But executive buy-in is the number-one barrier to social media implementation and roll-out, according to a 2009 survey by Prescient Digital Media, which also found about one-half of organizations in the Western world have some form of Web 2.0 on the intranet, said Toby Ward, Toronto-based president and CEO of Prescient.
“Many executives don’t have time to be messing around with social media and many don’t understand it,” he said.
Corporate reluctance can also be explained by perceived risks around giving workers the ability to comment on and rate a company or do potential damage to its reputation or trade secrets.
“That goes against traditional style of management, which is top-down: ‘Why would we expose ourselves to public criticism inside the company?’” said Shewchuk.
But the risks are “far outweighed by the ability that it gives people to get information, to collaborate online, to have access to that world,” he said.
There’s also concern about employee productivity, but if someone is wasting time on these tools, it’s a management or supervision problem, just as it is when someone goes for too many smoke breaks, said Pilon. If there is abuse of the media, Canam will treat it on a case-by-case basis, she said.
When it comes to rules and governance, fewer than one-third (31 per cent) of employers have a social media policy, found Aon’s survey. Canam recently published a policy to help workers understand the company’s mindset and to encourage them to use the tools, she said.
Prescient’s 2009 survey found about 58 per cent of companies have a governance policy and that appears to remain the same for 2010.
“It’s a little disappointing that more organizations aren’t doing their homework and their due diligence around this stuff,” said Ward, because if people are using these tools externally, organizations are left quite vulnerable.
