Social Media and Employee Empowerment

After reading the amazing article “People are not your greatest assets”, I was wondering if we can ever think on this tagline because we have always widely accepted that the employees are the greatest assets of any business or organisation. For any organisation to grow its employees are at the core of any business strategy, however, now I am beginning to have inclination on the other side of the story. Do we really care about these employees who we always say that this is my strength?

I will go by the views of the authors of “People are not your greatest assets” that what really is important is how you ‘EMPOWER’ your employees rather than just saying these are my assets. It really matters how you treat them and give them the real freedom to innovate and express themselves inside the organisation. ‘Social Media’ is the best way of empowering our greatest assets.

What really is happening in the case of Facebook, Twitter and Youtube? It is bringing people on the same platform, making relationships and sharing knowledge. Same is the case with Social Network inside the organisation. It brings collaboration into the organisation and empowers the employee.

Some of the advantages that a social media gives to the organisation are:

Building Relationships: With the social media, employees from different geographies and different locations can network together for the same goal.

Collective Knowledge: Talent pool can work together for a common vision and accumulate a vast knowledge.

Real Time Solution: With different minds working for a common solution will help in faster resolution to a problem and help in finding the specific expertise.

Common Interest: People with the same passion and interest can work together and ultimately can leverage the network built through social media.

We should work towards the empowerment of our employees through this mass collaboration which will help us to achieve our strategic objectives. 

Employee Engagement - A Driver for Business Strategy

Employee Engagement is defined as “the extent to which an employee commits to work or something in the organisation, how hard he/she works and stays in the organisation out of that commitment” [SHRM] However, we often use the word Employee Engagement interchangeably with Job Satisfaction and measure the employee’s engagement level. Job Satisfaction is basically how the employee feels about the nature of work he/she is doing, work environment, pay or benefits.

Source: http://www.peopleinsight.co.uk/

There exists a relationship between organisational strategy and employee engagement. It has been researched and proved that employees who are engaged in an organisation perform better and as a result contribute more towards the business strategy. Engaged employees work harder, are more loyal and likely to go extra mile towards the organisational objectives. They believe in the vision and mission of the organisation. The engagement of an employee is ‘Emotional’ i.e. how they believe about the company or the leadership and ‘Behavioural’. This behavioural factor is shown as how much effort the employee is putting towards the organisation which can be in terms of energy or time.

Here, while talking about the Employee Engagement, we should start differentiating between Engaged Employee and Actively Disengaged Employee. Engaged employees work towards the goals of the company while actively disengaged employees just come to the company and are more busy on acting out their unhappiness.

As what SHRM describes, the levers of Engagement can be characterised by Vigour, Dedication and Absorption. Vigour means filled with high energy and passion, Dedication refers to a sense of pride and inspiration towards work and Absorption defines the feeling of happiness and engrossed in the work without being detached.  Employee Engagement is greatly influenced by the reputation of the organisation, its culture and also its internal communication. Internal communication is essential as the employees especially Gen Y believe in the values of trust and transparency as discussed in my earlier blog. It is often believed that ‘Culture’ is a soft lever. However, employees are far more engaged where there is a culture of innovation, job enrichment and safety. Culture is established through the organisation’s reward and recognition programs, its policies on work-life balance and the opportunities it provides for the career development and growth.  Engagement is heavily dependent on the Manager-Employee relationship as it is widely said “Employees don’t leave organisation, they leave managers.” The managers create the bridge between the employee and the organisation.

Now the question arises that how do we measure the employee engagement?

Organisations are widely using employee satisfaction surveys, focus group discussions and surveys. Out of these Gallup’s Q12 is the favourite and widely used employee engagement indicator tool. The common themes that are used for employee engagement measurement are: Job Satisfaction, Pride of working with the current employer, Learning and Development, Reward Programs, Relationship with the Manager, Understanding of the organisation’s Vision & Mission and Intention to Stay in the organisation.

As discussed in earlier blog Employer Branding plays a pivotal role in attracting the right talent. With the Gen Y workforce, organisations have to create more employee friendly and innovative workplace culture along with emphasising more on the so called softer elements of HR viz work life balance, job quality, flexibility, diversity, career pathing and freedom at workplace. These are the new factors which have to be accounted for getting the right talent and the engaged employees.

Like the Doctors, HR Managers should keep on checking the pulse of their employees so that they get to know the probable gaps which need to be filled before these gaps collapse and lead to attrition.   

Employer Branding: A Strategic HR Tool

Employer branding is a tool which is used by every organisation be it small, midsized or a transnational organisation. The organisations need to market themselves as the best place to work for if they want to get the right talent in this competitive market. Employer Branding is like Sales where you have to sell your practices, culture and your USP to the prospective candidates. You have to differentiate yourself form what the competitors are already offering.

The process of creating your brand in the talent market starts right from how you do the onboarding, what are your practices and procedures in the organisation till the employee exits from the organisation. The employer brand is not created in a single day or through a single advertisement. It’s a long process that is built step by step. Organisations often believe that by simply having the best entrance and stringent recruitment processes they will create their brand in the market. However, the employer brand is built on the basis of what you are going to offer him/her on a daily work day and through his/her career path.

Trust and Transparency in the organisation plays a vital role in creating a strong employer brand as the rewards and recognition does. The Gen Y specifically believes in this theory where they want that the organisation should have a total trust in them and in their work, a place where there is transparency in the system and processes. If the organisations can place themselves a transparent organisation Gen Y employees will flock that place. 

Many organisations design catchy slogans and advertisements to attract the right talent. But they forget that every organisation is doing the same in some other way. They have to search within themselves and analyse their own respective strengths and weaknesses. They have to identify their own distinguishing feature that separates them from the rest of the crowd. Based on that USP they can sell their brand to the prospective candidates.

Organisations have to constantly sell their brand to the candidates as it takes time to build brand as an employer. When the time comes for recruitment an organisation cannot build its brand in a week or two, they have to constantly keep on building it even though there have been instances where they have to give pink slips.

The best way to build the employer brand in today’s scenario is the social media where the organisations can post the testimonials from the employees on how their every day of work is which will help the candidates to understand better about the organisational culture and would make them a better fit.

By making a flashy recruitment process and showing candidates descriptive JD’s where there is every possible task to be performed for that role will not build the company’s brand. They can get the candidates for that opening but very soon such candidates after coming inside the organisation will start sending the resumes again !!!

Fun @ Work

Fun and Work are two characters that are inherent part of an organisation. However, we are not serious about these characters and consider these two as the North and South Pole of the organisation. If we talk about the organisational culture where in fun can be seen in all the spheres of the growth, then we won’t be able to find many organisations. There are few organisations which have integrated fun with their business growth. Some of these organisations are Google and Semco to name a few.

In a recent survey done by Adecco, UK nearly three fourths of the employees in UK prefer to work for an organisation where fun is fostered in its culture rather than a fat paying organisation. If the employees are working in a good organisational culture then their performance and productivity also increases. People are more engaged in their jobs and feel more committed.  

Google Inc. Is the pioneer in this philosophy. We can take any Google office around the globe for that matter. Google’s office in California is a jewel which integrates the fun @ work spirit. The employees have the option of all the gourmet food they can think about in the world and that too at no extra cost. They can take a nap in their own potheads whenever they feel like. This increases the productivity of the employees as there is no stress in such conditions. They can work out at the Gym and keep their body toned. The employees have the option to come to the office with a laundry bag which they can get it washed in the office. What more an employee can ask for.

If you are at Google you don’t need to take the stairs as you have the fire poles and slides to take you to your destination. One can see such culture at any of the Google’s office be it Zurich or Beijing. If the employee has to go out of office for an errand the employees can take the specially kept electric charged cars to get their work done.  This is what which creates the employer brand and helps to get the best talent of the world.

Semco is another such company which promotes an entrepreneurial mindset where the employees have all the power and freedom to make their lives happier and contended while at work. They can have all the paid vacations they want as far as their work is all done. They can take their pets to workplace and have their meetings not in closed doors.    

These days other organisations too have started realising the benefits of making the office culture as a ‘Great place to work for’. They have started organising sport clubs and other such meets to promote these ideals of fun at work. The question that now arises is that what are we doing to make our organisations a great place, wherein the employees look forward to coming everyday to office.

This is a thought on which we should start pondering upon!!!!

Resume : A Passè

Soon it would be the day when the employers would be asking the prospective candidates to share their LinkedIn profiles and not their Resume’s. Today, many organisations have already started asking the candidates to send their LinkedIn profiles.

There are many advantages if the employers ask for LinkedIn profile. It helps the organisations to search for the candidates’ profile instantaneously. They can track the activity of the candidate on the LinkedIn network. This helps the employer to gauge candidates’ pro activeness and willingness to be active outside the work boundaries.

Moreover, the recommendations feature of the LinkedIn also helps the employer to get the readymade reference check.  It helps the organisation to get the true picture of the prospective candidate long before the candidate has been hired. Through the recommendations the employer also gets to understand the type and quality of work the candidate is doing in the present organisation.

Let’s gear up for this change in the world of Talent Acquisition and also the candidates should make themselves available and be ready.

Social Media: A new training tool at the workplace

Social media, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, is gaining popularity among the employees especially the generation Y and generation Z who are now entering the workforce. This is impacting the learning and development tools being adopted by the organisations, forcing the organisations to have a proper social media policy in the workplace and also educating the workforce about the do’s and don’ts of the proper usage of the social media at the workplace.

It is an enhancement to the traditional learning processes at the organisations. What it used to maybe a full day dedicated for training, wherein, a trainer would be called for giving specialised lectures on a particular topic evolved into e-learning. The advent of IT impacted a lot the way learning was done in the organisations. E-learning revolutionized the skills addition for the employees and it also cut down the costs involved in the training with the availability of training software at a comparatively reduced price rather than arranging the training programs again and again.

Chat? Text? Status Update? Blog? Tweet? The new in-thing for the employees. The organisations are exploring ways to create new social media strategy for their businesses. There is a large Corporation with its new Social Media Guidelines. As per Digital Strategist at this MNC, the social media policies does not necessary means that the employees will just understand the policies and incorporate them in their daily work life. However, it is to train the employees to use them effectively and efficiently to reach towards the organisation’s business goals and also to participate in the social media.

As per the latest report from Awareness, Inc. more than 75% of the employees are now using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for businesses purposes, which is up from 15 percent in 2007. Informal learning is becoming a key part of learning and development in the organisations.

Now the employees can share the problem within the company on an internal sharing website and multiple minds can be put to work and a more optimum solution can be found to the problem.  The employees can look into as what was the diagnosis to a similar problem and take help from that. This is learning without borders in a global environment. One such example of this learning environment is a database at one of the largest corporations which consists of over 15000 articles from employees defining, collaborating and documenting their part of the organisation workspace.

Some upcoming social media programs are like ‘Tweet like you mean it’, ‘Importance of Brand equity in social media’ and ‘Mobile marketing’. With increased competitiveness and dynamic business environment, the organisations are compelled towards creating a dynamic learning mindset. Within no time there would soon be ‘Chief Learning Officer’ who would put emphasis on rapid, collaborative and self directed learning. The new social learning can help people to become more informed, gain a wider perspective and to be able to make better decisions by engaging with others.    

Reference: : http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/02/intels_social_media_employee_t.html

Apps and Us

Are we ready to take the ride on the various apps that are being used by the new generation?

There are number of apps available for free download for the Android, iPhone or Blackberry users. Android with over 130,000 apps is becoming very popular with the new recruits entering the organisation. The question that arises today is that are We, the organisations, leveraging on these mobile applications which are becoming the new fad among the Gen Y people.

Recently one of the largest Food and Nutrition Company of the world launched an android app that targets the new recruits. The app is freely available for download and explains the values and culture of the organisation. The app also has links to the Youtube videos which help in creating and establishing the organisation brand.

Through these apps we can propagate the best practices of our organisation that will help us in attracting the best talent. In order to make ourselves as an employer of choice we need to enter the mobile software market. The reason is that the new generation frequently uses these apps to find the right career opportunity. It will also help us in finding the right candidate if we post our job requirements via such apps.

Organisations should make a strategy to use these increasingly popular apps to be included in their recruitment and branding strategies. In the near future the mobile market would be the place where all the job posting and search will be done. To become the leader in this market, organisations should start focussing and also developing applications that will help in employer branding. 

The 7E’s at the workplace

We always put more stress on the Intelligence quotient part throughout our school and college days that we neglect the emotional intelligence part. We forget that finally we have to work in an organisation where we would have to deal and interact with people. Today, many organisations are stressing on the emotional intelligence as a part of their recruitment policy. The interaction of the employees in a company affect the company’s ability to remain competitive in its given market or industry. The managers and the leaders must realise that these interactions will have a positive or negative effect on the company as a whole.

Important skills that managers and leaders will need to thrive in the current environment includes communication, discussion, negotiation and being able to manage the conflicts and also inspiring others to operate at a higher level. Equally important is the organisation’s ability to deal and handle the changes. It is also important for the organisations to work towards the stated business goals. This is where the Emotional Intelligence becomes very important and is directly related to do all these things.

There are seven emotional competencies, first of which is Emotional Self Awareness. This is all about understanding the impact of one’s feelings in the organisation and creation of self awareness. Self introspection is an important tool and employees in this category are aware of self understanding and ask for more feedback. 

Second is Emotional Expression. The outcome of this competence in an organisation is creating trust, genuineness and also creating understanding among other employees. People in this area of competence generally discuss various issues at work. 

Third is Emotional awareness of others. The outcomes of this are engagement of the employees, employee motivation and connecting with the employees. In this area, employees think differently about things that are causing and affecting them adversely. People create or identify more effective ways of responding to events and create environment that makes people feel more positive and optimistic. Employees understand their and company’s values and listen to the feelings.

Fourth is Emotional Reasoning. The outcome of identification of this competency is enhanced decision making and greater buy in. People in this area are beware of how they feel and react. Fifth is Emotional Self Management which is all about effectively managing your own emotions. The outcomes are better job satisfaction and people in this area remain more optimistic and are happy in the face. They feel the power of positive psychology. Sixth is the Emotional Management of Others. Outcome of this competency is positive satisfaction with the environment. People generally empathise with the other employees and engage with other as well. 

Lastly is the Emotional Control. The effect of identification of this competency is better dealing with the conflicts and improved relationships. Employees in this category overcome anger, identify issues and events and take some time out.

As per Daniel Goleman, about 70% of the communication is non-verbal and the impact of which is very important for an organisation. Hence, the organisations should include emotional intelligence as a part of their assessment of candidates in the recruitment and selection processes. The awareness of the level of EI will define how ‘fit’ is the employee in the organisation.

Social Media and the Gen Y

Are we tweeting, creating Facebook pages or connecting with the world through the social networking websites?

Organisations throughout the world have acknowledged the fact that the generation Y has entered the workforce and these are the employees who as we all say always ask ‘Y’. These are the employees who want to grow very fast in the organisation and earn a lot of money. These are unlike the Gen X people who were contented with what they were getting and grew steadily in the organisation. However, these out of box thinkers and entrepreneurial mindset employees want to become the CXO’s of the organisations in a short span of time. Are the organisations gearing themselves up to match the aspirations of such employees or are they allowing them to increase their turnover (attrition).

Today the Gen Y will spend at least 2-3 hours daily on either Facebook or Twitter. One comment about anything in the world will spread like fire over these networking sites. If Facebook is a country, it is now the third largest country in the world. Today, not many organisations are leveraging on this fact. They should know that any good comment or a status update about a particular company policy or organisational culture will help them to boost their image without incurring any cost. Organisations should create and update respective pages on such social networking sites because a simple ‘Like’ by a Gen Y will attract another Gen Y. This will help a lot in creating the brand of the employer. Moreover, organisations can also connect with their customers and provide them with a near real time update. Organisations should create such unique culture in the organisation wherein the existing employees can help the organisation to connect to these Gen Y people.

In organisations we often talk about what is the ROI , however, we forget about the return we would be reaping if we are able to meet the expectations of these Gen Y employees.