Introduction
We've all heard and used the term "competitive advantage habitually throughout our educational and professional careers. It's one of those things we know we need to strive for in order to be successful in business. Unfortunately, it's usually used in reference to product differentiation or reduced costs in a given industry. But if what makes a business successful is really its employees, shouldn't we also actively strive to create and maintain an internal competitive advantage? Being able to attract and retain the best and brightest is largely dependent on the working environment a company can offer. And that's where Human Resources should get involved.
Inevitably, as businesses grow and expand, the need also increases for company communication to transcend both place and time. As a result, HR departments across the globe are implementing intranets, social media tools, and content management systems to streamline their firms' collaborative efforts and facilitate the flow of ideas. For companies like IBM with roughly 40% of its 128,000 employees in the U.S. working solely at home or out of the office , using social media tools to stay connected from any location can be extremely advantageous in this era of telecommuting. Implementing such tools optimizes workplace productivity and your firm's internal competitive advantage. As an added advantage, the efficiency created by using a content management system (CMS) and the appropriate social networking tools will free up time for your HR team, allowing them to focus more effectively on recruiting and retaining the best employees for your company.
Streamline HR with Social Media Tools
There are countless ways in which businesses can benefit from implementing an intra-office web community. When it comes to your company's Human Resources department, many of the benefits are apparent.
Move past the memo using blogs
When the old-school memo - circulating through everybody's office or mailbox was replaced with the company-wide email blast, most of us probably thought we'd 'arrived.' A paperless office - it doesn't get any better than that! Unfortunately, now we're all battling clutter in our inboxes. But it doesn't have to be that way: an internal company blog offers a clutter-free place to post that memo for everyone - and people can discuss it right there in-line via comments, rather than transmitting hundreds of emails across the office per week.
Syndicate your content with RSS
Although moving to a blog is a great first step in efficient intra-office communication, it can't really be maximized until you take the next step and syndicate your content using an RSS feed. Employing an RSS feed to display updated content - from your internal blog, announcements, press releases, or even headlines and content summaries from external sources gives staff control over how they receive important information. Syndicated content can be incorporated into a home page on the intranet, or employees could subscribe to relevant feeds using the RSS reader of their choice. However syndicated content is used, RSS is a clear and concise way to display the newest HR announcements, files, and the like, hence eliminating office clutter. Social networking tools such as blogs and RSS feeds allow users to immediately access company information that is updated in an official manner, and provides hassle-free access to more casual day-to-day content as well.
Share authorship using a wiki
Perhaps one of the most valuable social media tools for organizing corporate content is the wiki. Your community wiki provides a place for employees to contribute, edit, add, and share all relevant office content. Featuring a wiki section in your company's intranet will give HR staff members a place to publish countless documents and files such as vacation request forms, employee handbooks, tax and health insurance forms, and holiday schedules. Because of the user-friendly nature of a wiki, content is easily updated - even by non-technical staff - any time there's a change in policy or an update to a document. HR staff can streamline their own time by providing resources via the wiki, and all employees will benefit from knowing the content available is up to date and accurate.
Create an internal knowledgebase
Incorporating social media tools into your company's existing intranet can also help foster the growth of your firm's knowledgebase. A knowledgebase is the company 'special sauce' of collective knowledge, expertise and experience that's been developed over time. It's an important resource for new employees, and gives employees a place to document and access all the tacit knowledge that various team members have fine tuned over the years. Developing a knowledgebase benefits HR functions in that it enables them to broadcast, add, and modify their company's best practices.
At Hannon Hill, creating our own internal knowledgebase has been one of the most beneficial outcomes of our shift toward social networking tools. In the past, important documents regarding policy, procedure, and best practices were stored in HR and had to be requested; now every member of our team is able to access anything they need on their own. It's had the dual effect of making employees more independent, while keeping the team more connected by giving them ready access to information.
Social Media in the Workplace
When deciding which social media and networking tools your company should incorporate, ask yourself how each tool would make the lives of the HR team better. Since the Human Resources department is integral in improving and maintaining an internal competitive advantage, make sure that the goals and needs of HR are a priority. The tools that will most benefit and optimize the functions of your HR department are those that make it extremely easy for content authors to publicize information and make it just as easy for content users and readers to search, sort, and access that content.
Take it outside the office
Aside from fostering efficiency and collaboration inside the office, social networking can also help HR departments optimize many of their external communications. Similar to the concept of an alumni network at a university, HR departments can utilize social media tools to help build goodwill and stay connected with past employees. Instead of losing the tacit knowledge and added value a past employee has contributed to the firm, treating them as your corporate alumni will allow your company to tap into their knowledge for continuous added value to your organization. Furthermore, using social media tools to maintain relationships with past employees will afford your business a broader, more robust network of business contacts in addition to ensuring your firm of the best word-of-mouth advertising it can find.
In addition to strengthening relationships with your corporate alumni, social media tools within your office web community can also strengthen the HR recruiting process. Providing threaded discussions in-line with relevant job postings and the like will spark communication between not only current employees, but potential new employees as well. If a potential job candidate can look online and not only learn of a new position, but also view the discussion and buzz the position has created, with other news like who has accepted similar positions, and recent company acquisitions, more attention will be drawn to your firm's recruiting efforts. Everyone knows it is difficult to recruit and hold on to good employees. Job seekers are looking for transparency when they browse the web - particularly the brilliant, innovative, ahead of the curve job seekers you're trying to attract. Providing relevant information in the easiest way possible will give your company a competitive advantage in hiring.
Rethink the office
For you skeptics out there, while shared office space is not a thing of the past, the notion of the workplace and where it can be located is changing daily. With roughly 12.5 million Americans working from home at least one day a week (up 63% from 2004) , providing effortless access to one central location with company information, procedures, resources, and best practices is critical in optimizing HR productivity. Using social networking to improve your employee community doesn't mean you intend to remove the more personal 'human' element from the office, just like MySpace isn't trying to negate face-to-face friendships. In fact, it seeks to accomplish quite the opposite: simply to make non-face-to-face communication more personal, more accurate, and easier than ever to participate in.
Whether your company is spread out over multiple offices (and even multiple countries) or working out of a single room, social media tools allow employees to stay in-touch, stay updated, and stay social. Using these tools at your business will improve the efforts of your HR team, assist in the development of a stronger office community, and streamline communications between your HR department and the rest of your staff - all of which serve to further strengthen your company's internal competitive advantage.
