Social Media and Company Culture: Strategy That Can Transform Your Workplace
As your company expands and grows, you have one of two choices when it comes to company culture. One, you can let it develop on its own and lose control of the message. Or two, you can control it from the beginning and set the tone for the culture you want to create for your employees. Company culture is an unescapable phenomenon, and is evolving with the aid of global teams, virtual employees and social media. Combined, social media and company culture can work together to help you create your dream team at the office.
Your employees, managers and executives must be able to grow, thrive and create within your company culture, but it must first be created as a unique entity that touts the benefits of working with and for your company. If you don’t have a plan for company culture from the beginning, you’ll lose the reins quickly and find yourself playing catch-up for years.
Although it’s your front line employees that really share and change your company culture, the ideas are sent down from the top from the beginning. In this way, all parts of the equation are involved in creating a unique, positive, innovative place to work. If company culture is used properly, it becomes a powerful tool in brining on new talent and keeping them.
Social media and company culture work together in many ways to create and enforce the values and mission that you want to achieve with your company. We’ve created a list of easy ways to incorporate social media into your strategy for company culture.
The New Employee Feedback
Previously, feedback was gleaned from employee surveys to determine how to improve company culture. One of the biggest problems employees have with their jobs is that they feel their input is not valued or used to improve the environment. In today’s world, you may have employees that are all over the country, or even the world, so how do you create a space where they all come together to feel connected
Create a platform for engagement for your employees to share ideas and give valuable feedback about how to improve processes throughout the company. Utilize an internal platform, or use a secure social media channel to ask questions like:
-How could we improve communication internally
-How could we help you become more efficient at your job
-What parts of our company culture could we improve
Companies today are faced with the unique task of uniting those who live all over the world, without the face to face interaction to do so. This is where social media and company culture become vital to the future of the company.
Monitor Your Social Media
You may think you have a handle on what your employees think of working for you, but social media and company culture can tell a totally different story if you know where to look. Companies should be keeping a close eye on their social media networks and review sites such as:
-Twitters
-Quora
-Glassdoor.com
Pay close attention to how comments on these forums relate back to your company mission and values. Do they match up accurately, or are you portraying something different than you would like Completing a social media company culture audit can also give insight into who is the most vocal and supportive of your company, and where the influence lies.
Use Your Employees to Spread the Message
Highlight your employees and let them tell about their own experiences with social media and company culture within your company. Most companies claim that their people are their best asset, but take it a step further by really showing how the people in your company benefit from working for you. Let your employees use their own words to tell their stories, and highlight them on your social media channels.
Social media at all levels can be a powerful statement that employees are trusted to love the company culture enough to stay where they are. Many executives block social media in the workplace as an attempt to avoid talent poaching, while others embrace it as a powerful way to show confidence that employees love where they are at. Allow your employees to sell your company culture in any way they can.
Using Mighty Recruiter
Here at Mighty Recruiter, we’ve put together a list of resources and tools to help you create a positive atmosphere for social media and company culture in the workplace. Use our resources to create a company culture that brings in top talent and keeps it for decades.