Melcrum Social Media Conference for Internal Communications – Day Two
June, 30 – BY ALISON PIGNON – The standard of the content, presentations and debate on the second day of Melcrum’s Social Media conference for Internal Communications was very high overall. I was madly scribbling notes all the way through. Meanwhile, others were tweeting madly to share the gems they were picking up, with a prize being given to the person who tweeted the most throughout the day.
The conference was opened by international keynote speaker Euan Semple, with his entertaining mixture of dry Scottish wit and insightful observations. These included the need for organisations, and particularly leaders, to think less in terms of justifying ROI when it comes to social media and more in terms of justifying COI, i.e. Cost of Inaction – that is, not allowing it to happen.
The first case study was from a high profile professional services firm who is using social media to successfully encourage innovation and sharing of ideas by employees through an ‘Idea Zone’ on their internal website. It also turns out that this organisation has the largest Yammer community worldwide with 3,000 employee members. Their governance approach includes a social media steering committee and also a social media response team.
Next we heard from Robin Crumby, Managing Director of Melcrum who flew in from the UK to speak. He took us through some of the key findings of Melcrum’s 2010 global research into social media adoption internally by large corporations. It was interesting to hear that half of the 2,600 respondents (19% from the Asia-Pacific region) feel that the business case for social media is clear while the other half feel it is not clear. It seems the business world is still completely divided on this point. The research revealed what communicators believe to be the three most effective uses of social media internally:
- Getting employees to talk, share information and collaborate
- Building communities
- Connecting to and learning from Generation Y employees.
After lunch, Lizzy Geremia, Brand Strategy Manager at NAB talked us through a very interesting case study on the use of online event technology to engage employees in the Personal Banking part of the business in the new brand promise. Using an easy to navigate and visually interesting online conference platform, employees were able to listen and watch a recording of the business head talking in an auditorium about the brand promise and then wander through to other booths to listen to other leaders’ ‘talking heads’. Employees were able to put questions to leaders via chat functionality, as well as talk to each other, and also provide online feedback. The results were great with the event reaching nearly 50% of the population and 95% of those who completed the feedback saying they had a better understanding of NAB’s brand focus as a result.
A final highlight of the day was the case study presented by a large banking, insurance and investing services organisation. I particularly liked how they measured the levels of employee engagement with social media tools and were able to group them into champions, advisors, members or just ‘missing’. The organisation identified the need to be more collaborative and grouped their communication tools under four groupings:
Connect – online portal
Share – video channel for employees to use
Discuss – Yammer and Microsoft Office Communicator
Innovate – Magazine
A lively panel debate closed what has been an interesting and engaging conference. Perhaps the next one will take place in a virtual setting?
IABC World Conference 2010 – Day Two
June, 10 – BY TAM SANDEMAN – 
Day two was surprisingly unfuzzy given last night’s awards dinner. A good thing given there was more great conference content to come.
Today, I had two specific conference highlights: The first, hearing from a spritely pair of internal communications professionals from a company called SAS, a privately-owned global business analytics company, with a head office in North Carolina, and approximately 11,000 employees across the globe.
They spoke about how effective internal communication has helped them succeed. They were credible from the outset as they’re currently ranked No 1. on Fortune magazine’s Best Companies to Work For list – http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/snapshots/1.html.
They spoke about how they’ve built an extremely impressive culture of trust, one based on open communication between executives and employees (importantly two-way, not top down). They’ve ensured their people have a strong voice in the organisation, no matter how remote they may be. The architect of this rare corporate culture? CEO and founder (and one with a delightful name), Dr Jim Goodnight. Goodnight had previously worked for the tightly governed NASA and decided early in his career, if he ever was to own a company, he’d do something about the work place to ensure it drove productivity.
To further support the business benefits, the people turnover was less than 2% in 2009. Put simply, people do not leave this extremely successful business, which also bucked the trend during the last year’s turbulent economic times.
More impressively, SAS has been one of the few companies at this year’s conference which has really embraced internal web 2.0 strategies and can tell the tale of reaping the business benefits. With the help of an energised and active team around the world, its Global Communications Council have not only utilised traditional internal communications channels, but have really made online channels work.
An impressive and tailored intranet, RSS feeds, polls, quizzes, competitions and one of the best blogging communities I’ve seen. It has built camaraderie, a strong sense of trust and a united force across a disparate business. Most importantly, the company executes with a sense of fun wherever they can – a strong lesson to those organisations choosing a more serious tone to engage.
My second highlight today was listening to the very engaging Bill Quirke – a UK consultant and author of Making the Connections: Using Internal Communication To Turn Strategy into Action. Quirke echoed much that was delivered on day one around trust and the serious focus leaders need to place on rebuilding this going forward.
He reinforced that leaders, as we know, are THE most influential channel in an organisation, and that they’re most influential when they think they’re not communicating (i.e. when they’re outside the town hall meetings or in the corridor). He highlighted the critical need to ensure they know they are ‘on’ 24/7.
Amusingly he highlighted one challenge common to many businesses: Leaders know communication is important. They get it. They say it is fundamental to business success. And they truly believe that. They know they set the tone and the agenda. However, when asked how much time they really spend on talking to their people, the answer is usually none or very little. This is totally disproportionate to the need and to their belief in its importance. Again, something as communicators we need to address with leaders, knowing we are the facilitators, but they have to execute.
Today, however, was really topped by a young Canadian called Craig Kielburger, who I think probably put many of our own personal social responsibility efforts to shame. He spoke about he and his brother’s ‘Me to We’ philosophy, developed after more than a decade of humanitarian work www.metowe.com. Their work has driven real social change. Very very impressive.
As internal communicators, we know the important role CSR programs can play in engaging a workforce in a company’s ‘higher intent’ and I think many of us left conference day two wondering how we too can find ways to inspire employees amongst the mundane.
There Craig stood in front of us today and what we saw was real authenticity…
