Social Media an Increasingly Important Tool in Keeping Employees Engaged

Employers faced with reduced communication budgets and resources are turning to social media to keep their workforce engaged, according to a survey released today by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation and Buck Consultants, an ACS company.

The survey explored how organizations are communicating with employees to keep them engaged and productive and received responses from nearly 1,500 participants representing a broad industry and geographic base.

• Almost 79% of the respondents report that they use social media frequently to engage employees and foster productivity, outranking even email (75%).
• Company blogs are the most popular social media tool currently in use (47%), with discussion boards ranking the highest for future planned use (33%
• Current use of social networking sites such as Twitter (21%), Yammer (20%), and Facebook (18%) is significant, but organizations are planning to use those tools even more in the future.

It should be noted that social media was not the intended topic of this research. According to Robin McCasland, Chair, IABC Research Foundation, the survey was intended to get a snapshot of employee engagement among their members’ workplaces.

"We did ask some social media questions in the survey because it is THE buzz topic these days. But, it was not intended to be the primary topic."

She added, "However, we found it interesting that social media emerged even in the questions where it was not one of the possible multiple choice responses. We asked a question about which communication methods members use to promote engagement. A couple of the suggested answers included e-mail and face-to-face meetings. “Other” was another response option. For that question, 72 people chose “other” and wrote in “social media.” They didn’t elaborate — but did rate their use of social media very high."

Looking to learn more about the use of social media inside a corporation? Check out the book SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate. It's also available for the Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device.