Half of employees now communicating via social media

Nearly half of employees currently communicate through Facebook, instant messaging, and Twitter, but senior executives are still reluctant about embracing such social media tools to help gauge employee engagement in the workplace. Compounding the problem, almost a third of companies rarely or never conduct employee listening exercises—this is according to the second Employee Engagement Survey jointly conducted by Buck Consultants and the IABC Research Foundation. The survey of just under 900 communication professionals from a broad range of industries and geographic bases was aimed at finding out how organisations are communicating with employees to keep them engaged and productive.

“Respondents reported slight increases in use of social media tools, and more of them say they have established internal and external policies for appropriate workplace use of social media,” said Robin McCasland, former Chair, IABC Research Foundation. He added, “When managed effectively, social media can be a great addition to an existing employee engagement strategy. Employees and job candidates alike can read employer news and anecdotes that reinforce a strong, positive culture.” The survey found the most common communication vehicles organisations use to engage employees and foster productivity are e-mail, 83% and intranet, 75%. It also measured practices for creating and sustaining a culture of engagement in organisations, key findings are highlighted below.

Increasing productivity, 66%, and retaining top talent, 65%, were the most important goals employers cite to keep employees engaged.

Other important goals identified by survey respondents were increasing employee morale, 59%, and creating a new culture or work environment, 52%.

Most top executives do not participate in internal, 60%, or external, 62%, social media.

Fewer than half the organisations surveyed have policies in place to address employee use of internal and external social media.

Approximately half the organisations surveyed do not measure the effectiveness of internal and external social media.

Sustaining an engaged work culture

32% of survey respondents indicated that their organisations rarely or never conduct employee listening activities.

For those that do, publishing a formal list of values, 74%, and using exit interviews with managers, 73%, were the most common practices adopted to sustain an engaging work culture.

Other practices included: regularly surveying the workforce on engagement and work satisfaction, 60%, inclusion of material on the organisation’s culture in new hire orientation, 56%, and involving senior leadership in orientation programmes, 54%.

Formal or informal employee feedback, 77%, was the most common way organisations measured the effectiveness of their employee engagement strategies.

Other methods included meeting annual company performance goals, 48%, and measuring employee retention rates, 42%.

Nearly a third of employers say corporate policies and lack of understanding are stifling recruiters’ use of social media, despite a growing demand from staff as the vast majority regularly use social websites. This news is according to a global survey of HR professionals: The barriers to social media adoption, and ways to overcome them and drive new candidate streams, recently published by Lumesse. The survey indicates that use of sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to acquire new talent are still massively underutilised, despite the fact that two thirds of employers say they want to hire more people in the coming year. From the candidate’s perspective, 82% of jobseekers respond positively to contact via social media, making it ideally suited to building talent pools among in-demand staff.

According to the report, 60% of the employers surveyed already use social media as part of their recruitment strategy, and over a quarter have plans to do so in the near future. Yet 28% of employers said that corporate policies restricting access to social networking sites were a problem and a lack of awareness of social media was cited by 69% of respondents as the greatest barrier to implementation.

Matthew Parker, CEO, Lumesse explained, “Recruiters’ interest in social media is growing—96% said that social media has a role to play in recruitment because it’s one of the best ways to reach out to potential employees worldwide and build new talent pools, especially for high demand skills like mobile application developers or managers with experience in emerging markets. However, many recruiters aren’t opening Twitter accounts or LinkedIn pages in the absence of clear corporate support. Red tape and a lack of understanding may be harming the uptake of social media despite the fact that recruitment tools with built in capabilities are there to support them.”