23 Jun How Important is Social Media Employee Engagement?
Posted at 08:05h
in
Social Media
by Paul Sutton
Over the last 12 months I’ve become more and more personally engaged in a variety of social media channels, from Twitter to LinkedIn to Spotify. And when I say ‘personally’, what I really mean is ‘professionally’. I use social media not to post status updates about what I’m doing at the weekend, but to monitor and converse with communications professionals who I respect and gain value from. (At least, most of the time I don’t talk about what I’m doing at the weekend!) I share thoughts and ideas, I collaborate, and I gain huge personal knowledge, information and skill that benefits me in a professional capacity. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t stay on top of the social media/communications industry or do my job without the input and support of my social media networks.
This ‘personal’ relationship investment pays huge dividends not only for me personally, but also for my employer. And I am fortunate enough to have an employer that recognises this; a company that invests the time (and money) into my personal knowledge bank, understanding that this pays off in the form of company profile, and client acquisition and retention. As a result, I have an amount of time from my working week that is dedicated purely to social networking; researching trends and tools, reading blogs, and sharing thoughts and ideas. It’s a very progressive approach but one that I hope is paying off in spades.
Given this freedom, I try to manage my time well, dedicating appropriate time to client requirements, company social media marketing, internal training and research: I do my very best to achieve business goals. But however busy I am, without fail I try to build in time to remain active in my social networks. Some days this is built into my day itself, on others it forms my lunch break. But unless I’m out at clients all day, I always check in to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. (And even then I tend to check in via my smartphone.)
So if I (and my employer) recognise the value in this investment, why do many get twitchy about the idea of workers being actively involved in social networks? Not everyone, admittedly, uses social media the same way I do, but surely this is down to a lack of education of the benefits, both from those company owners who know the advantages, and those employees who use it for professional reasons. Undoubtedly there’s a performance element to the equation; an employee who is hitting targets and doing a good job will be more trusted than one who isn’t. Even if an effective employee is using Facebook, for example, for personal reasons, if they’re doing a great job does it matter? Maybe social media even helps give them a valuable break and some thinking space?
It’s when employees aren’t performing that problems probably arise. An employee who is not effective or efficient and who spends some work time, however short, on social networks, will be frowned upon. In this instance, the business arguably suffers die to social media, rather than benefits from online community participation.
I’d argue there’s also a divide dependent on job role. As Head of Digital PR, my role necessitates me spending a lot of my time on the social web, whether that be for clients or personally communicating with my network and reading blogs. But does an account executive have the same requirement? I personally believe that every single comms pro should spend time reading blogs and conversing with peers on Twitter, and that this should be part of their job role – it’s something I try and encourage. I feel that these employees are more engaged with both the industry and the company they work for. But I’m all too aware that this doesn’t happen and maybe isn’t realistic given the pressures and constraints of client work.
So over to you – what are your feelings? How long do you spend on social media during a typical day? Do you feel that social media should play a role in every communications professional’s working life? And if so, to what extent?
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