Many organizations have started using
social media tools internally to interact with their employees. However, the majority of companies have either
stayed away from using these tools or failed to see satisfactory results. In
fact, in our survey of 1060 global executives, only 30% said that they work for
companies that benefited from the internal use of social media.
Why do so many companies either avoid
using social media or fail to make it work? In an article with Quy Huy which just came out in the MIT Sloan Management Review (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-fall/54112/the-key-to-social-media-success-within-organizations/) we find that to be
successful, internal social media initiatives must focus first on the
development of EMOTIONAL CAPITAL that represents the quality of the emotional
connection between a company and its employees. Executives who use social media
to build emotional capital in the communities of their employees reap real
benefits, in terms of improved information flows, collaboration, lower turnover
and higher employee motivation.
The reason social media works well in
one company and can be totally ineffective in another can be seen by looking at
the experience of two companies – a technology company Tekcompany [i]
and the European Nordic branch of Tupperware, a U.S. based kitchenware company
that sells the products through direct sales channel.
Tekcompany's executives mobilized expensive experts
to develop internal applications that mirrored the functionality of Facebook
and Twitter, and built a platform that allowed for the creation of internal
wiki pages. In the end, however, the company had little to show for all that
effort. Tupperware Nordic, by contrast, invested less than $50,000 in social
media initiatives, but obtained much more impressive results. Between 2008 and 2011,
the turnover rate of Tupperware’s predominately part-time sales consultants—one
of the most important cost drivers and indicators of morale in a direct sales
industry fell dramatically. Furthermore, both the ease at which best practices
diffused throughout the company and the company’s revenues increased.
Tekcompany followed an implementation
approach that reflected a traditional information technology mindset. When
asked about the most important factors that accounted for success of social
media communities, TEKCO executives told us only about technological aspects
(e.g. the ease of use and availability of social media tools), without any hint
that they had also considered emotional capital.
In a stark
contrast to
Tekcompany , Stein Ove Fenne, managing director at Tupperware Nordic, had
an intuitive understanding of the importance of creating positive feelings through
social media tools. Through his actions he has demonstrated the four
pillars of emotional capital:
authenticity, pride, attachment, and fun.
A major source
of authenticity is the senior executives’ ability to show that their statements
in the “virtual” world are consistent with their behaviour in the “physical”
world. For example, Fenne began by establishing personal relationships with
many consultants by visiting all major centers of activity. He started to
invite consultants to Tupperware’s headquarters on a regular basis and roll out
a long red carpet in front of them. Many of his colleagues were shocked by this
treatment in the low key and egalitarian Scandinavian business culture. Yet,
precisely because this symbolic gesture was so unusual in that local business
context, consultants noticed it, greatly appreciated it and discussed it
extensively in their physical and virtual conversations.
Pride is a feeling experienced when one’ achievements
are recognized and appreciated, and this helps motivate people to continue
achieving in the future. Fenne uses social media to provide an inexpensive platform
for generating non-monetary rewards for consultants. He frequently organizes
webcasts from his office, where he and his staff play the role of talk show
hosts. Consultants’ teams from different countries connect and observe what is
going on in headquarters through WebTV and post their live comments on a
Facebook-type “wall” seen by all participants. During the show, Fenne calls on
every sales team, publicly asks them to report their results and thanks them
for their achievements.
Employees’
attachment to the company is generated when employees feel that they belong to
community with shared values and interests. Some of these values go beyond
direct work-related interactions. Fenne created a Tupperware Nordic page on
Facebook to which consultants can link their personal pages. Some consultants
indicate that they enjoy cooking, others enjoy music, and still others enjoy
reading/writing blogs on burning social issues. When consultants visit the
company’s Facebook page (or Fenne’s personal page), they can identify other
consultants who share the same non-work interests and connect with them
directly.
Fun is
particularly important in an organization that wants to encourage innovation. When
Tupperware’s consultants discover particularly effective ways of product
demonstration, they produce best practices videos. Sometimes these videos
gently make fun of the persons in those videos, for example, showing a
competition among Danish men who (somewhat clumsily) compete in cooking using Tupperware
products. These videos are shared through social networking websites. Funny
elements in these videos attract viewers’ attention and show that deviance from
“corporate” ways of getting things done not only is tolerated, but encouraged.
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