5 ways social media can benefit your workforce 

May 6, 2016

In the past it was not uncommon for businesses to block access to social media sites from work machines in an attempt to curb frivolous use during office hours. Even in recent times social has been seen as a drain on employee productivity instead of the incredibly useful tool it can be when put to good use.

Here are a few ways you and your team could be using social media to benefit your organisation.

Communication

Facebook messenger now provides group calls so your team need never be unavailable, less messing around with dial ins and conference calls. Tools such as Slack and WhatsApp provide handy live messaging platforms for staff members, work groups or project teams while Facebook messenger does that and so much more. Everyone has the devices needed to communicate without email, so why not use them?

Even senior staff members can benefit from having an archived, closed group messaging system.

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Scheduling important events on Facebook is one method to guarantee all attendees are up to date and won’t miss out, although most office systems still struggle to integrate with social, so pick what’s best for you.

Collaboration

If one or more groups need to share ideas or brainstorm remotely then using a Pinterest board, private Twitter list or even a team hashtag could be really useful.

Working together across channels can be a brilliant incentive to contribute and a great way to inspire creativity. You can now draw over the top of a live Periscope feed, so flipcharts really are going extinct. Having an online point of reference for collaborative work means less is lost in translation and the process is stored for later review.

Advocacy

Sharing your brand’s content is good for both staff and the organisation as a whole. Encouraging staff to share blogs, white papers, reports etc. on social media fosters their online reputation as thought leaders and industry experts.

This has a direct knock on effect to the next section:

Recruitment

Social recruiting is a fairly common practice, and maintaining an active social presence curated by staff members is the ideal way to showcase your company culture and entice candidates to join you. But it’s not just potential employees, clients will also want to work with people who show their workforce are happy and productive.

Morale

Listening is just as important as speaking, something as simple as a weekly office poll on Twitter could provide you with valuable insight into the collective office psyche.

Collaborative Spotify playlists are great fun and almost a team building exercise in themselves. Get everyone to add two or three songs at a time and soon you will have the ultimate office playlist.

Adding staff outings to Facebook is another way to integrate the office with social and make sure everyone is on the same page.

So there we have it, productive ways to use social in the office.

If you have any suggestions we would love to hear them in the comments below.