Current efforts of engaging employees using social media has been limited to at best having a social media presence and building networks with employees. However the future of social media engagement would be drastically different and unimaginable.
The ‘internal’ resources are the set of employee that an organization has and the ‘external’ resource are the vast untapped talent in the eco-space. In my opinion the companies can use both a ‘passive’ and an ‘active’ social media engagement with these communities. Hence we create something like four combinations out of this theory – ‘Passive Internal’, ‘Active Internal’, ‘Passive External’ and ‘Active External’. I shall try to expalin each one, without necessarily intellectualising the post:
The first one ‘Passive Internal’ essentially involves using social media to passively engage the internal resource i.e. the employees. This happens through communication of company’s happenings, changes, achievements, future plans etc. Through company blogs, letting employees network among themselves, letting employees share their employment experiences and even letting employees share how they can innovatively use the products of their company for example employees of some retail companies have shared pictures & posts on Pinterest which is like a virtual bulletin boards about the garment combinations that they have used during the weekend . Alcatel-Lucent uses several social media tools in its business, including internal social media networks created specifically for employees. Within this framework, employees can engage and converse with each other about pretty much anything. Facebook-like platform – Infy Bubble, Cognizant 2.0 or C2, Wikis and Justask at Tata Consultancy Services, Channel W and My Wipro World at Wipro Technologies, Ideabank of BankWest, Australia are few but very strong examples.
The ‘Active Internal’ is where company uses social media to seek ideas, suggestions from their employees. The company also tries to connect with employees and their families and even tries to leverage internal talent identification and internal head-hunting using social media. At Dell, social media is becoming a part of everything that employees do. It is used in internal collaboration, product development, social commerce as well as talent acquisition. Some of the social media tools embraced by Dell include Salesforce.com’s Chatter tool for internal social networking as well as a number of internal blogs and instant messengers. These are great for sharing information, forming project-based or interest-based groups and generally breaking down the silos you’d expect in a large organization.
The passive and active are essentially interpreted in the above two cases according to the one-way or two-way bridges built by the company. In passive mode the idea is to inform and/or provide a platform to employees to share. Whereas in active mode the company wants to hear from employees, explore their potential and tap in to the same.
The ‘Passive External’is the next phase that basically sees a company reaching out to the willing social media contributors in the eco-space and networking with them, often involving them through discussion groups, followership etc. The idea is to create brand advocacy groups and get connected with the cast willing talent base outside the institutional employees. For example about 5 months back the Asst.Vice President and Head of Training & Development Division at Sharjah Islamic Bank, United Arab Emirates started a discussion on one of the groups in Linkedin – ‘’Another name for "Training Department". Hundreds of suggestions have poured-in and more than anything its has given an opportunity for the bank to connect to many training professionals and organizations, that it can possibly tap into more actively later.
Finally the ‘Active External’ happens through the much talked about social media recruitment, back-channel referencing and talent poaching. Under the title ‘By Graduates for Graduates’, Unilever’s Future Leaders Programme sees current graduates helping to recruit the next graduate intake by managing the social networks sites.
In these two cases, the passive and active interpretations are slightly different. The passive efforts with the external resource essentially lets company network with millions of talent outside the boundaries of the company ho are willing to contribute and the company can tap into their potential by c0nnecting with them, using heir ideas and inputs and by creating a greater brand-affinity amongst this talent base. Whereas, the active mode, sees the company trying to use social media to build more efficiencies into its HR system.
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