Research reveals widespread adoption of social media inside the firewall
LONDON, January 11th, 2010 — Melcrum, specialists in internal communication research and training, has embarked on a major global study on large organizations’ use of social media to engage employees, deliver strategy and drive business results. Preliminary findings reveal widespread adoption, a clear business case and visible return on investment for communicators.
Internal communicators are increasingly turning to Web 2.0 tools, such as employee and executive blogs, online video, and internal Twitter-style forums, to deliver key strategic messages, stimulate collaboration and knowledge sharing and boost productivity.
In a recent Melcrum member survey, 40% of respondents said the business case for social media within internal communication was clear and that there is visible return on investment, while 53% of the 2,212 senior communicators who responded said they were planning to increase investment in their organization’s intranet in 2010.
When asked about channels used for internal communication, online video and webcasts were cited as of increasing importance, with the intranet ranked as the most effective channel by 73% of senior communicators worldwide.
The business benefits of investment in social media highlighted included improved levels of employee engagement (21%), better communication with remote workers (16%), knowledge management and collaboration (25%), improving employee feedback (20%) and making business leaders more visible and accessible (14%).
“Many organizations have now moved beyond the experimentation phase and begun embedding social media into the way they do business,” said Victoria Mellor, CEO of Melcrum. “There is a fundamental shift happening with how information flows inside an organization. Peer-to-peer online networks are enabling real-time feedback from employees to inform decision-making, not to mention facilitating collaboration between remote workers,” she added.
Preliminary findings were presented at the first meeting of Melcrum’s Social Media Benchmarking Group, set up in response to requests by members for benchmarking and discussion between practitioners, to help raise the bar on their team’s performance and stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practice.
Some of the many challenges explored by the group included getting executive buy-in, how to measure social media success, who should ‘own’ social media, dealing with multiple languages, convergence between internal and external environments, and social media governance.
Melcrum’s forthcoming research will concentrate on the role communicators perform in getting the most from social media, how they monitor and measure results, how they make the business case for additional investment, how they protect their organizations against misuse by employees, and social media’s impact on other channels such as e-mail.
“Time and again, we hear great stories from internal communicators who have had successes with blogs and online videos and are now looking to take the next step and integrate these tools into their communication mix. Melcrum’s research will provide them with examples of good practice and guidance on how to do this and avoid some of the common pitfalls,” says Mellor.
Highlights of the research study will be presented at Melcrum’s London conference on February 9-10th, 2010: “Social Media for Internal Communication”. The full findings will be made available to members of the Social Media Benchmarking Group and subsequently published as a major new research report in March 2010.
Any organizations interested in taking part in the research study should contact James Bennett, Head of Content at Melcrum: james.bennett@melcrum.com or Alex Manchester, senior consultant, Step Two Designs: alex@steptwo.com.au
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About Melcrum
Melcrum is a privately held internal communication research and training business, founded in 1996, with offices in London, Washington and Sydney. Past research projects have included: How to Structure Internal Communication, Employee Engagement, Leadership Communication, Communicating Change and Measuring Internal Communication.
Contact: Victoria Mellor, CEO, Melcrum Publishing
UK Tel: +44 20 8600 4670, US Tel: +1 (202) 393 8960
E-mail: victoria.mellor@melcrum.com
Website: www.melcrum.com, Blog: http://www.melcrumblog.com
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