HR Professional - April/May 2008 - (Page 21)

controversy on his blog last year when he reported that an employee spending one working hour per day on Facebook costs the company $6,200 a year. Multiply that by 100, 10,000, even 100,000 employees and it doesn’t take long to realize the costs to both productivity and the bottom line involved with unrestricted social media access. Don’t be left behind But social media, like its inﬂuential predecessors, the phone, television, e-mail and the Internet, appears set to prevail against the naysayers. By shunning or neglecting its potential, employers, some no doubt frightened by change, may only be postponing the inevitable. When PetroCan is running videos on YouTube, Nike has a proﬁle on MySpace and Ernst & Young has its own Facebook site, the earth has already moved and everyone else is just playing catch-up. R e sea rch conducted by the University of Massachusetts concluded that social media usage among the fastest-growing companies in the U.S. has exceeded previous expectations in terms of growth and speed. The New York Times reported that businesses are expected to double spending on brand monitoring this year, with a meaningful portion of that money probably being diverted to social media. In fact, scratching your head over this technology may already make your company and its policies seem anachronistic. Wondering whether you should deploy wikis, podcasts, forums, blogs and video blogs at this stage of the game is eating up resources that could be better spent developing a strategy for using social media to help you market your product, reduce costs, educate and engage the public and your employees, and attract and w w w.H RThought L eader. c om retain talent while enriching your company culture. “Some organizations are missing the opportunities presented by social media. It’s not too late; however, the company has to have something relevant to say to the target audience, whether employees, customers or partners,” says Toby Ward, president of Prescient Digital Media, an Internet and intranet planning and management firm in Toronto. The trick is for employers to stop worrying and learn to embrace Facebook or YouTube or Enterprise 2.0 and the dizzying array of benefits they can provide your company—if you apply them shrewdly and creatively. “There are lots of incredibly useful applications for social media in the workplace that business should consider,” says communications and content expert Maggie Fox, founding partner of Social Media Group in Dundas, Ont. “From a purely HR perspective, companies can use an internal blog to communicate general HR news to employees. I’ve also seen firms use things like podcasts for distributing training materials to their sales forces.” Fox notes that wh i le some organizations are busy banning Facebook, others are actively embracing it as a way of connecting with employees both on and offline. She cites the example of Tucows Inc., a large and successful global software distributor based in Toronto. “ T h e y r e c e n t ly s e t u p a Facebook group to facilitate corporate events organization, in effect using the social network to bring their staff together and foster morale. That’s a lot more positive than telling employees they can’t be trusted to manage their own time, even on lunch breaks. The idea of networking employees together to encourage collaboration, boost morale and harness collective brainpower is not a new one. Firms like SAP and IBM have been doing this for years.” Alien-nation Media of all kinds has a huge inﬂuence on daily North American life. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that Americans spend 8.5 hours per day gobbling up various media; and a 2007 report from comScore Networks indicates that BECOMING x MORE SOCIAL • Research what your target audience wants or expects • Develop a plan based on a thorough assessment and include measurable success indicators • Leadership must set the tone and control the message • Showcase relevant, up-to-date and valued content that supports, promotes and details your products, services and competitive advantages • Develop a content focus (e.g. strategy, innovation) • Encourage employees to join the dialogue by posting comments and questions • Blog (or podcast) according to a schedule. Many initiatives start off with too many posts and dwindle off to nothing • Write for the web: keep it short, succinct and break up blocks of text with bullets, sub-headers and tight paragraphs • Know the link between your website, sales and customer service • Understand the ingredients of a good blog and use benchmarks • Keep pace with trends, best practices and technological advancements • Monitor to see what is being said about you A p r i l / M a y 2 0 0 8 21 http://www.HRThoughtLeader.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of HR Professional - April/May 2008

HR Professional - April/May 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Contributors Leadership Matters By the Numbers On the Web Careers World Watch Accounting Health & Safety Foreign Professionals Management Office Life Legal Compensation Web 2.0 @ Work Talent Management Systems On Message Strategy HR 101 Interview With Colin Mackay Off the Shelf The Last Word

HR Professional - April/May 2008

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