How In To You Are Your Employees?

Employee engagement is one of those HR terms that companies use when they are measuring the output from their employee’s.  What types of behavior the employee exhibits in order to be successful and therefore make the company more profitable. Traditionally this was studied by looking at the following:

Behavior – meaning they worked late to finish the project or went the extra mile.Attitude – showing how much of a cheerleader they could be for their company by always talking the company up.Retention – is turnover rate low and sick leave use down.

These are the metrics by which companies measure employee engagement.  Now in the world of social media we are always looking at “Engaging” our clients and customers.  The more engagement the better we feel, we have mastered our social media marketing.  Are we missing an opportunity to take it to another level by not benefitting from our employee’s social networks?

When a company Tweets or Facebooks an announcement or article, yes their competitors may take a look at it, industry followers might glance at it, but unless you have something brand spanking new and innovative, it kind of falls flat.

Employees are the key! Employees are now publishing to make names for themselves and build their own professional resume. They are joining groups and forums as well as putting out articles about their field. They are your ambassadors on social networks. An employee that is engaged in their industry is also engaged in their company. The best way to build an online reputation is to see what your own employees are saying about topics of importance in their fields, because this reflects on the company.

Social media is about building trust in your brand, whatever that may be.  Trust comes from showing you are the best at what you do, that you are knowledgeable and capable.  What is a better reflection of this than  your own employees?  Employees that write about their company’s product, services or engage in online conversations in their fields, it’s because they feel connected and dare I say it ENGAGED by their company to do so.  This engagement is also  a way to validate that a company is doing something right.  It is a good indicator that a person feels some sense of organizational loyalty, a bit empowerment and satisfaction with  their role in the company.

When employees share professionally on social media they are getting the name of the company out in a way that we are just now developing metrics to measure.  It is definitely an under utilized tool in the social media content creation realm, but one that needs to be seriously  considered.

Source: Pace Feed