One of the great things about living in the Chicago area is that I am able to attend events that I might not normally attend if they were in other cities. Such was last week’s Modern Healthcare/Studer Group’s “Best Places to Work conference. One of the sessions was a topic near and dear to my heart, social media, but this time the spin was a bit different. Instead of focusing on external communications (patients/community), it focused on using the platform to communicate with employees. The moderator was Kriss Dunn who runs two websites hrcapitalist.com and fistfuloftalent.com, and the panelists were Vicki Noel, VP of HR/Organizational Development at Southern Ohio Medical Center and Rulon Stacey, CEO of Poudre Valley Health System.
(Disclosure before I continue: I did not record the session; I am relying on memory and notes. My apologies in advance if I misrepresent any of the information shared).
Each of the presenters had different experiences to share. Ms. Noel spoke about SOMC’s experiences with setting up an internal Facebook group. The original intent was to use an internal site to master the medium for external use. However once SOMC was involved, they found that it was a powerful platform to engage their staff. While using the site is optional 1300 of the 2300 employees engage with the site on an ongoing basis (one of the examples cited was a request for input on a script sale which generated 800 responses in a 24 hour period). Dr. Stacey spoke about how his blog http://visionary.pvhs.org/ is one of the many vehicles he uses to connect with the employees of PVHS. It allows him to share and showcase great employee stories to both his organization and to the outside world.
Many organizations are afraid that letting employees access to social media during working hours will open a Pandora’s Box of issues including inappropriate use of the media, loss of productivity, and other issues that can put the organization at risk. However, it has been shown that many of those issues can be addressed with appropriate HR and Social Media training and policies. (Side note: In this day and age, if you do not have a social media policy in place you should create one STAT! What is said and done online outside the workplace can be as or more troublesome than what is done inside the workplace). If you are not comfortable with public forums, products exist like Yammer that allow for closed network communication.
Ignoring social media platforms (Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) cuts off a vibrant communication to communicate with your employees in a framework they use. Many organizations are using the tools to recruit, communicate and engage their staff. Moving forward, the question is should not be if but how to best use social media tools for internal communication in your organization.
Note: This was originally posted in “Patching the Boat” October 27, 2011.
