With the increasing adoption of social media by organisations especially in relation to brand engagement with customers and clients, we are now starting to see some case studies for how social media can be used to enhance employee engagement through internal communications.
The recent announcement by the company I was on the board of before establishing my own brand engagement and social media practice about the impending significant organisational change they are about to go through made me think back to my time as HR Director where I also had responsibility for internal communications.
At a time of significant change, one of the key challenges was always to ensure that we had pathways for communication open. We were always keen to understand how effectively our line managers had been in translating and engaging their people in the key messages and making sure the communication was relevant for their teams.
We also wanted to respond quickly and effectively to questions raised from our employees as a result of the organisation announcements. No matter how our extensive lists of frequently asked questions were that we created to support all major communications, you could be sure that some questions were never addressed so we needed to respond to these queries quickly.
If only I had had at my disposal the social media platforms now easily available which would have enabled us to add additional platforms that we could have used to support our communications plan.
But where can you turn if you are a leader with responsibility for Internal Communications and employee engagement and want to learn about what your peers are implementing and current best practice?
A conference I will be attending which will showcase some leading case studies in intenal communications in the next few weeks is the International Employee Communications Summit co-hosted by Ragan and Simply Communicate.
Some of the company's presenting include IBM, Ebay, BT and Microsoft. The agenda for the International Employee Communications Summit includes:
- Building your brand and values through collaboration and content
- Social media inside the enterprise
- Video Podcasting: How to stream key messages to a mobile audience
- How to beat the policymakers, lawyers and IT to get your social media channel up and running
- How to use social media to energise and motivate the work force.
You can book online to attend the conference which is taking place on the 5 and 6 June 2008 in London (there is also a pre conference workshop).
I'll be attending with my notebook and recorder in hand and hope that I'll get the chance to capture some great insights to share with you. and if you are considering attending, let me know as it will be great to connect with you at the International Employee Communications Summit.
Link to original post