Social Business : How To Engage Workforce
An organization’s social business initiative can
- Drive real business value
- Increase revenue
- Cut costs
- Improve relationships with your customers
- Enhance internal and external collaboration
But the catch line is: Participation and Collaboration of Your Workforce.
It is the workforce which helps create tangible business value with their innovative and collaborative participation in the social business initiative of an organization.
How to ensure participation of employees in a social business
If you want to ensure the commitment of your employees to implement best-practices for social business, you as an organization need to be very focused to make your social business employees-friendly.
Your social business shouldn’t be adding more work for your employees, rather social business technology and processes should be in-sync with the existing employee experience, and should not be implemented as a new or separate roadmap.
Educating the non-believers in social media is essential. Tangible evidence from other organizations implementing social business successfully can help you win the confidence of naysayers of social business.
It is also important to humanize rather personalize the social business, showing the employees worth of implementing it , which not only makes their jobs easier but also helps enhance their personal branding.
One thing that can do wonders for the entire workforce is social media training sessions in an organization. Every stakeholder in the organization needs to be trained about the best practices and efficacies of social media platforms and tools in a given scenario.
Word of caution for the corporate use of social media
However, with regard to the corporate use of social media, organization should have a social media policy in place to minimize reputation risk and vulnerability to legal issues. Organizations should also develop appropriate controls to managing emerging risks created by indiscriminate and casual use of social media. The ill-informed or irresponsible social media usage can have severe ramifications for individuals and organizations, and also pose significant risks. Organizations should also geared up to monitor, evaluate and take advantage of the constantly evolving social media landscape.
Social business initiative is not only about improvement of relationships with customers and enhancement of internal and external collaboration, but it is also about responsible use of social media by the organization and its workforce.
Social business initiative means delivering real value to business.
