In the midst of corporate downsizings
and a tough economy, executives are
looking for ways to keep employees motivated, focused and productive, but
they don’t have the luxury of spending a
fortune to get there. Leading-edge companies are successfully leveraging collaboration and social media technologies to
keep their employees connected, productive and engaged.
“Creating connections between employees and business units fosters collaboration and increases productivity,
group problem solving and knowledge
transfer,” say Susan Sanders and Kris
Addington, senior consultants for
Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Smart Business spoke with Sanders
and Addington about how companies
can drive employee engagement and productivity through interactive strategies.
How can social networks benefit companies?
Addington: Collaboration tools are a
great way to bring geographically disparate groups of employees together to
share knowledge and ideas toward a
common goal. Online discussion groups,
internal blogs, collaboration sites and
profile pages allow employees to join in
the company conversation and are an
effective way to leverage intellectual capital. Social networks, such as internal
‘Facebooks,’ bring people with similar
interests and issues together and make it
easier for employees to track down internal experts.
Sanders: When they’re more connected
to the company, they’re more connected
to their job. That’s what leads to increased
retention and higher productivity. Also,
it’s important to recognize that millenials
expect companies to have these capabilities, so when we start to recover from the
current economic situation, socially networked companies will be in a better position to compete for their talent.
