More companies are using the power of internal social networks to help employees get the news and information they need, as well as other resources critical to doing their jobs.

Social networks connect employees

Some are at the starting line, just jumping into the social media waters. Others have built a global “digital village” for employees who can post updates in a Twitter-like feed, share information with colleagues and receive crucial corporate information that is fed to them daily.

One of these companies is Pfizer, the world’s leading pharmaceutical company. I wrote about Pfizer’s internal network My World last year. This network is truly awesome and it has only expanded its capabilities since then.

Come to Our Social Networks Webinar

I will be co-presenting with Bob Libbey, senior director of Global Colleague Communications and Corporate Social Media, Pfizer Inc., at an HR.com webinar on Tuesday, May 22, at 1 pm, EDT.  You can register by clicking on the title of our presentation: How Internal Social Networks Enable Interacting and Responding to Employee Needs.

I will describe how smaller companies can also establish social networks for their employees by using third-party networks such as LinkedIn, Google+ and Ning.

Bob will explain how Pfizer consolidated more than 400 news and information sites, each with its own look, feel and navigation set-up. In the past year, Pfizer’s My World has attracted 175,000 unique visitors (including outside vendors and consultants) and over 60 million page views.

So I invite you to join us on our webinar to learn how your company can start or expand your employee’s internal social network.

Related articles

• Internal social networking can help employees get engaged (bizjournals.com)

Imagine my surprise when I went to the TED website and typed in a search for presentations about “employee engagement” and up popped the response: “No result matches your query.” How could that be?

So, I figured they must file these talks under “employee communications.” Nope, none about that either. Surely “employee retention” is a serious problem and should be a topic for a TED talk. Nada. Another strikeout with “employee motivation.”

TED’s tagline is Ideas Worth Spreading. It seems to me that a management guru, or academic or corporate luminary must have some ideas about how to engage, communicate with, motivate and retain employees. I can’t believe that employees don’t matter to TED and the audiences who pay to hear their speakers. Why is one of this week’s featured talks about the secret life of plankton more important than a presentation, say, about how to engage and motivate employees for greater productivity?

So I turned to YouTube, where 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute. I wasn’t disappointed. I couldn’t go through every video about employees, of course. But I think you’ll enjoy this one about How to Motivate Employees.

Technologists are perhaps the least aware of all employees of the value of having a personal brand.

More important to them is getting a project done on time, completing development, going from test to production or ensuring the business has signed off on requirements.

Transcending Boundaries

Frank Faeth

Technologists need to transcend the perceived narrow boundaries of their job descriptions and develop a brand that communicates the value they add to the organization.

Today, brands are no longer the sole domain of companies. An individual’s brand is just as critical in promising value and trust to others in the company.

Tom Peters, the well-known author of “In Search of Excellence,” writes: “What is it that my product or service does that makes it different?” Translating this into personal branding, what do you do as a provider of technology services that makes you stand out and compel someone on the business side to work with you?

Integrating Business and Technology

A recent finding by McKinsey highlights the difficulties business managers and technology providers continue to wrestle with:  “…only 26% of technology leaders proactively engage with business leaders on new ideas or system enhancements.”

Companies with a low ranking will have significant difficulty enabling new strategies and integrating business and technology objectives. They’re doomed to fall behind those firms where technology providers and their business counterparts work together harmoniously.

Building your personal brand

To “engage” with the business, technologists need to develop a personal brand embodying five qualities:

Advocacy:  as an advocate, a technologist will actively support his peers and counterparts on the business side. Instead of waiting for a “charge code,” the technologist will represent the business needs to his colleagues and seek the best possible solution, even if there’s disagreement that requires a new approach to the problem.

Knowledge:  technologists must know the business – how it makes money, the markets in which it competes, threats, competitors’ strategies – as well as his business partners. There is no other way to gain respect than for the technologist to see herself in the same position as his colleagues who have the P&L responsibility. Indeed, without knowing the business, technologists will remain merely providers of infrastructure, never being sought out for adding value.

Presence:  it’s not only about how you look, your poise or your sophistication; rather, presence is an authentic quality that builds trust in others. No matter what your style, people want to listen, follow, and do great work for you. Presence is projected wherever you are and in whatever you’re doing. It is essential for developing the strong relationships required in order for you to do your best work. You have to make your internal clients confident that they are in good hands.

Authenticity:  because you will be guided by the facts, you will be trusted and known as reliable and believable. Your stature when discussing alternative technical solutions and possibilities for the business will be credible because you are being true in your thinking, your understanding, and your representations. Businesses will value what you are saying because there will be no agenda attached.

Dependability:  simply said, you are trustworthy. When you make a suggestion, disagree, deliver bad news, or ask for more time, because they trust you, your message is far less likely to generate questions or doubt. In fact, your communications with business leaders will be enhanced since there’ll be less stress embedded into the message — based on the past, they know what you’re saying is accurate and honest.

Brand Equity

Standing out from the crowd by creating your own brand does not mean you have to be loud, self-absorbed, controlling or possess a huge ego.

Instead, it is about representing yourself so that you are seen as someone who knows what she is talking about, gets the point across, is credible, can be counted on, thinks beyond technology and, above all, is trustworthy.

By leveraging who you are, you build personal equity, which is your brand.

Technologists must develop personal brands so that their colleagues begin to imagine them as leaders, even if they don’t have the title.

Frank Faeth coaches technology, operations and business executives how to collaborate more effectively with their counterparts. He has held senior positions managing technology and business units with JPMorgan Chase, MasterCard and Marsh, Inc. Visit him Faeth Consulting.

Adding to my argument in last week’s post 6 Steps to Empower Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors, David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times, explains the importance of allowing your employees access to social media while at work.

He is interviewed in this Ragan.com video entitled “Half of U.S. businesses block social media. What’s the point?”

Employees are actively engaging on social networks such as twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, tumblr, Pinterest and others that seem to pop up every day. With the encouragement and trust of senior management, employees can become your company’s most important and loyal brand ambassadors.

Engage Your Employees

Below is a presentation (slightly revised) that I presented at a recent HR.com webinar on Social Media and Employee Communications. My presentation entitled “Empowering Employees as Brand Ambassadors” included:

• The steps your company can take to develop a corps of brand advocates – from identifying ambassadors, training them, developing a pilot program, and then launching your advocates on social media.
• How companies like IBM, Zappos, and Comcast are engaging their employees to burnish their brands and sell more products and services.
• How to develop a social media policy that works for your company.

If you would like a larger view, you can see the presentation on SlideShare.

There is still time to register for the free Social Media webinar being sponsored by HR.com. My talk, “Empower Employees as Brand Ambassadors on Social Media to Promote Your Products, Services and Brand” will take place on Friday, March 2, from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. ET. Here is my “booth” at the webinar. So clever (that is not me in the photo).  HR.com is a free membership site. Once you’re in you can also download my slides. Hope you can join the conversation.

Write Speak Sell booth

Corporate HR departments can’t ignore social media and its impact on employees. Employees are on social media so how do you manage their participation?

HR.com, the largest social network and online community of HR executives, with 194,000 members, is holding a free webinar entitled Social Media and Employee Communications with two days of speakers on March 1st and 2nd.

As the webinar copy states, “powerful enough to fuel revolutions, the tools of social media can connect and enable employees to new levels of communication that enable productivity and alignment with business results.”

Empowering Employees As Brand Ambassadors

As my regular readers know, I’m a big supporter of organizations that engage their employees to serve as brand ambassadors for their companies. So, I will be one of the speakers. Here is a link to my talk at 12:30 on Friday, March 2nd.

My session is about how to Empower Employees as Brand Ambassadors on Social Media to Promote Your Products, Services and Brand.  I’ll be discussing:

• The steps your company can take to develop a corps of brand advocates – from identifying advocates, training them, developing a pilot program, and then launching your advocates on social media.
• How companies like IBM, Zappos, Comcast, and Pfizer are enlisting their employees to enhance their brands.
• How to develop a social media policy that works for your company.

Other speakers will be discussing how to manage a Facebook page, social media analytics, a social media approach to employee engagement research, and much, much more. So consider registering for the entire event. It’s free, as is membership in HR.com.

Hope you’ll join the discussion!

Nurture employees social networks

When the prestigious Harvard Business Review devotes most of an issue to happiness, you know that happiness is a serious topic. The magazine cover is entitled “The Value of Happiness: How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits.”

I particularly enjoyed the interview of Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert in an article entitled The Science Behind the Smile. He’s the author of the international best seller Stumbling on Happiness. The study of happiness has devolved into a science whereby you can measure a person’s happiness at a moment in time. Science is in. Intuition about someone’s happiness is out.

What Makes Employees Happy?

Dr. Gilbert is quite clear about what makes employees happy. He says that people are happiest when they are appropriately challenged, “when they’re trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach.” He adds, “Challenge and threat are not the same thing. People blossom when challenged and wither when threatened.”

Hurray, my hometown New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Yet another fourth quarter comeback for the Big Blue. They also won big with a record-breaking number of mentions on Twitter and Facebook.

The team’s owners scored big time with the leadership and enduring commitment to a philosophy that produces winners. It’s a lesson that other CEOs could emulate that I’ll discuss later in this post.

Super Bowl Site Traffic

Twitter tweeted that in the final three minutes of the Super Bowl there were an average of 10,000 tweets per second.  That is mind-boggling, really – 10,000 x 60 x 3 = 1.8 million tweets.

The Washington Post reported that sports fans sent about 11.5 million comments during last night’s game over social media networks (quoting All Things Digital), about six times higher than last year’s game. The Giants were interacting with fans on Twitter and Facebook before, during and after the game.

Giants Leadership

Eli Manning was the game’s MVP for leading his record-breaking fourth quarter comeback. But I want to talk about the team management’s leadership that has made the Giants one of the most respected franchises in sports history. It is a lesson for every company that wants to build the core competencies that will lead to success over the long haul.

It began in 1925 when Wellington Mara bought the NFL franchise Giants for $500. Over the years the Giants went through some very bad patches. But in the last 20 years the current ownership has honed a philosophy that you pick the right people, stick by them when things are tough and love your fans and players.

A Winning Philosophy

This philosophy has led to four Super Bowl victories, including this year when fans and media were calling for coach Tom Coughlin’s removal when the team lost four straight games. But the owners publicly continued to support their coach. They committed to him and their team and they were rewarded with the ultimate prize – the Lombardi trophy.

The Mara family still owns a half interest in the Giants, along with the other owner, Steve Tisch, from another respected New York family, (you can read about their leadership philosophies in a New York Times interview of the owners and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots who lost to the Giants 21-17).

Loyal Fans

The Giants fans are among the most rabid and loyal fans in football. The Giants have never had a “blacked-out” game. If a team doesn’t sell-out the game, it is not televised locally. The waiting list for season tickets is somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years. Seven hundred fans paid $5,000 each to travel to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

In post-game interviews, the players, the owners and Tom Coughlin repeatedly mentioned how much the fans contributed to their victory.

Employees, like Giants fans, want to see their team succeed. Do you have a winning philosophy of hiring the right people, providing them with training and showing your love and respect for them? If you do, they will work their hearts out for you.

What more could you want?

A highly engaged workforce translates into improved financial performance for companies. You’d expect that, wouldn’t you? Yet many companies with command and control structures still don’t get it.

Because jobs are scarce now, senior management of these laggards don’t feel the need to engage with employees to reach the shared goal of making the company great. As a result, according to an Aon Hewitt study, companies that don’t fit its “Best Employers” category are losing shareholder value.

Smart companies understand, however, that an engaged workforce is a productive workforce.

Employee Engagement Correlates to Shareholder Returns

Organizations with high levels of engagement (65% or greater) continue to outperform the total stock market index and posted total shareholder returns 22% higher than average in 2010, according to the study by the human resource consulting firm. On the other hand, companies with low engagement (45% or less) had a total shareholder return that was 28% lower than the average, as illustrated in this graph.

The study shows the key drivers of employee engagement in this graph.

Note that study respondents from Aon Hewitt’s employee engagement database say that pay is only half as important as career opportunities.  So simply giving employees a raise isn’t as important as putting systems in place that reward employees with opportunities to build their careers in the organization.

If you are an employer, are you engaging with your employees and offering them the opportunities to grow? If you are an employee, do you feel stuck in place? Maybe it’s time to move on.