Using social networks to engage employees - Abi Signorelli, CIPR Digital Focus Conference 2009

keeping communication simple at www.abisignorelli.com
Digital for internal comms
Using social networks to engage employees
Abi Signorelli

A bit about me
 Freelance Communications Consultant
 Over 15 years in senior communication roles:
 Director of Internal Comms at Virgin Media
 Head of Internal Comms at Virgin Mobile
 Senior Manager, Internal Comms & Knowledge at Vodafone
 Senior Manager, Internal Comms & Knowledge at Alcatel Lucent
 Communications Consultant at O2
 Passionate about all things social media
 More at www.abisignorelli.com

Some thoughts on social media

Is social media a fad?
 Years to reach 50 million:
 Radio: 38 years
 TV: 13 years
 Internet: 4 years
 iPod: 3 years
 Facebook 100 million in less than 9 months
 1 billion iPod app downloads in 9 months
 96% Gen Y have joined a social network
 80% of Twitter usage is on mobiles – people can update anywhere, anytime
 Gen Y and Z consider email passé
 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
 Only 14% trust ads
Social media isn’t a fad
It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate

Famous examples - great
When Obama arrived at the White
House, he’d gained millions of names of
supporters who could be engaged
almost instantly through his political
social media campaign.
“By engaging with supporters, he was able to create that all important sense of
connection – “he's talking to me, he's in my network and
he's someone I feel like I know’.
He provided a chance to challenge, question and connect and by acknowledging the
discussions, he made it feel like everything had been read and taken on board."
•c7 million facebook fans
•>2.5 million twitter followers
•3 million online donors = $5 million
•92% in increments of less than $100

Using social networks to
engage employees
Case studies

 With over 15,000 McDonald’s locations across the US and Canada,
they asked “how can we connect all of you with one another”
 They built something where employees can:
 Connect
 Participate
 Give feedback from the frontline
 Showcase new products
 Explore McDonald’s brand and values
 Celebrate successes
 Build community online with each other
 “stationM is…
 …giving you a voice
 …connecting crew
 …creating a community
 …100% pure fun”

McDonald’s stationM

McDonald’s stationM
 McDonald’s ranks #32 in top 100 “most social brands”
 McDonald’s viewpoint
 All about the relationships you have and build with your key audiences
 All about cultivating those relationships so that…
 …you enable those key relationships to become brand ambassadors…spread the word!
 "It provides us the opportunity to get information to the people who are interacting with our customers
day to day. And [it] provides us with a channel back to hear what's on the minds of our crew people, what
they're excited about and what questions they have. We can use that information to better handle our
future communications.”
 “Internal blogging is a great way for employees to feel connected, not just to one another, but also to top
management and ultimately the brand itself. It is a positive way for a company to build creditability
among its employees by acknowledging and addresses what is happening at any given moment within
the corporate community.”
 Ben Stringfellow, senior director of U.S. communications at McDonald's.

 In 2008, O2 launched their new brand promise “we’re better
connected”
 They asked “how can we lead the way with innovative approaches
that would help O2 people connect?”
 O2 people wanted an online community where they could…
 …collaborate
 …share
 …learn

O2’s mingle

O2’s mingle
 mingle is an internal social networking site just for O2 employees
 It adds real business value through collaborative group working, cross-directorate networking, as well as
blogs, videos, images and more
 The user-centred design approach involved O2 people through creative workshops, so employee
engagement and ownership levels reached unprecedented levels.
 In a social climate rapidly adapting for ‘Generation Y’ employees, mingle has already shown massive
potential in affecting O2’s talent management, employee engagement and organisational effectiveness
workstreams
 “With a diverse audience spread across many locations in the UK, effective and innovative channels like
mingle play a key role in our communication strategy at O2…putting audiences first and designing
concepts, messaging and delivery methods around our specific needs were integral to making our new
channels a success.”
 James Allen, former Head of Internal Communication

 BT wanted every employee to have a place of their own on the
intranet, where they could…
 …create web pages and allow others to edit them (wiki pages)
 …share photos and files
 …create as many blogs as they wished
 …connect themselves with other people in the organisation

BT’s MyPages

BT’s MyPages
• ‘MyPages’ is their killer application
• “The fact that individuals could manage all this functionality through a single ‘portal’ was incredibly
powerful and sent adoption rates through the roof.”
• “With only viral marketing, within a couple of weeks over 1,500 people had activated their MyPages.
Activity and traffic on this tool was so heavy that it sent the JotBox into meltdown and all our social media
services disappeared overnight!”
• Richard Dennison, Senior Manager Social Media, BT

Using social networking to
engage employees

Some engagement benefits
 Aligns and galvanises the workforce
 Helps to become an authentic listening organisation
 Creates true two-way conversation
 Everyone can connect – remote / dispersed workers connect with people they’d never normally
meet
 Water-cooler / cigarette break moments not confined to a single office
 Opportunities to share ideas and best practices wherever, whenever
 Fantastic way of building relationships – with anyone – on a professional and personal level
 Everyone has an outlet to express their opinion
 Non hierarchical - allows comms to flow from the top to bottom, bottom to top and side to side
 Leaders become more accessible and authentic – they become human beings

Can we ignore it?
 If people are using these tools at home, they’re ready and willing to use them at work
 People are doing it anyway
 Younger employees expect social media - Gen Y are so used to two-way communications that they
don’t really pay attention to anything else
 96% Gen Y have joined a social network
 Gen Y and Z consider email passé
 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
 Only 14% trust ads

Actually doing it

Integration and alignment
It’s vital to seamlessly align your social media approach
with your brand values, culture and company strategy
– and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
With clear goals and outcomes outlined,
your social media objectives should fully integrate
with your internal comms strategy and
should be an evolution of your internal comms
approach, rather than a separate strategy.

Leadership buy-in
Many leaders struggle to understand
the power and benefits of
social media in the workplace.
Producing a strong business case will
help ensure your leadership team fully buy-in to your
strategy and lead by example.

Getting social with your employees
Fully embracing the tools and techniques is the best
way for your leadership team and internal comms
team to lead by example and get social
with your employees.
Engaging and involving your people
at every opportunity is vital to ensure
the success of any social media objective.

Some
(but by no means all)
tools

Chatter

Facebook

Yammer

Ning

In a nutshell

In a nutshell…
 Social media isn’t a fad – it’s a fundamental shift in how we communicate
 Social networking is a fantastic engagement tool providing endless and enhanced opportunities to…
 …connect
 …communicate
 …collaborate
 …innovate
 People are doing it anyway
 Younger employees expect it
 Getting social is a natural and essential evolution of how you communicate with your people

Thank you!
My blog: http://abi-signorelli.blogspot.com

Using social networks to engage employees - Abi Signorelli, CIPR Digital Focus Conference 2009

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