Business Concerto

There’s a lot of available data on the social media landscape and its adoption by the Australian public.  Australians have been hailed as the no.1 users of social media globally, spending up to 7 hours on social networking sites monthly, even more than users in the UK and US.  The Nielsen Company’s 2010 report indicated that Australia’s social media audience is 9.9 million and other research has estimated that one-quarter of Australia’s online audience is participating by creating content on social media platforms and elsewhere.

When looking for quantitative data on the number of Australian companies using social media and how, the research is fragmented and scarce.  Many companies are still questioning the benefits of introducing social media to their business models.  At a conference on social media and issues for HR hosted by AHRI last week, approximately a third of the delegate representatives stated that social media was banned from their organisations.

While quantative data is lacking, there are some great case studies of companies adopting social media for internal purposes.  They have decided to educate their employees on how to communicate and use interactive platforms responsibly while adopting initiatives and processes that enhance communications and community with its employees and increase levels of engagement.  Other organisations are using new social platforms to support cross company projects and for recruitment purposes.

Having approached some companies directly, here are some examples of social media initiatives being implemented by business in Australia and the results that they are seeing …

Deloitte

Deloitte has been particularly active in adopting social media platforms for internal communications and employee engagement purposes.  Deloitte Australia uses Yammer, a platform that can be described as a type of “Facebook for business” that allows for a secure and private company platform for employees to share news and updates. Over half of Deloitte’s employees are using this micro-blogging platform and it has been suggested that using social networking tools has broken down silos between teams and is responsible for increasing employee retention.

In 2011, Deloitte also introduced Only@Deloitte, a YouTube festival in which employees were encouraged to share their experiences and insights on working at the company on video. Objectives for this initiative were to educate potential recruits and encourage participation between staff. Over 100 videos were posted with participation by 800 Deloitte people with 50,000 video views on the Deloitte YouTube page during the campaign.

Pollenizer

Pollenizer is another example of a company using the social platform Yammer to communicate between staff, clients, partners and industry.  Within the company, it has been described as the “office water cooler” where everybody hangs out and where they hear about what’s going on in the company.

To quote one of the team at Pollenizer, “our team needs to be constantly connected and communicating as often as possible.  We are in an industry that moves fast so sharing lessons, insights, links, archive of ideas, motivations, feelings, case studies, competitor info, industry info, successes, failures with each other is very important. Yammer is totally addictive. It is an important cultural touch stone for the team and an integral communication tool when we work with virtual teams around Sydney, Australia and the world.”

Microsoft

Microsoft in Australia has recently introduced a ‘workplace advantage’ scheme. This has involved seven years of research on the most effective ways of working and the outcomes have included the refurbishment (or entire relocation) of all Australian offices to a new way of working, allowing Microsoft employees to come and go as they please, be fully mobile and work from wherever, whenever, and make the most of their office space.  From an HR perspective, managing this change was a mammoth task. It resulted in significant changes for employees and which has impacted their working lives, at least in the short-term.

In terms of communications, Microsoft launched a social networking environment named ‘Yellow Balloon’ where employees could ask questions, get access to the latest updates and alerts on office news around the country and members of the Microsoft team offered perspectives through an interactive blog or answered community questions.

According to Microsoft HR, the collaborative environment has had a real impact on employees. “Everybody recognises the Yellow Balloon, and social media has allowed us to bring an accessible, informative and humorous voice to what otherwise could have been an overwhelming and alienating series of changes for employees.”

Atos Origin

A non-Australian case study in this summary but an interesting example of how a company is using social platforms to bring email under control.  Atos Origin is a European IT services company that has been experimenting with social media and collaboration tools for its 49,000 employees across 40 countries.

According to the FT, Thierry Breton, chief executive of Atos Origin argues that the ban is necessary because the volume of email circulating inside his company is now “unsustainable”, causing managers to spend between five and 25 hours a week just reading and writing emails.

Atos Origin will be banning email for internal communications by 2014 and replacing this with online, social collaboration tools.  It has been predicted that this will reduce the amount of email within employees’ inboxes in the region of 10-20%.

Research references
*The Nielsen Company,  March 2010
**Forrester Research, November 2008