Not only are companies recognizing their top employees through internal social media outlets, such as Yammer and Salesforce Chatter, but they have now turned to using public forms of social media for recognition such as Facebook, Blogs and Linkedin.
According to a recent survey by Deloitte, 49% of employees believe employee recognition is important to their overall happiness at work.
Best Western has publicly recognized their employees’ accomplishments using social media. Best Western created a Facebook Page for employee, Wallace Pope, who was nominated to receive a “Stars of the Industry” award from the Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association.
The Facebook Page was used to ask guests of the downtown Chicago hotel to share their experience and reasons why Wallace should receive the award. This promoted stories and shared experiences as to why Wallace should win the “Stars of the Industry” award.
A blog called “Where’s Wallace?” was created, where Wallace virtually interacted with visitors. The Facebook page not only helped the judging process but was a great way of advertising and marketing for the Best Western hotel.
Facebook: The use of Facebook to highlight employee accomplishments will not only boost the morale of the employee but it will add to the company’s Facebook page. Including pictures and tagging the employee will allow the recognition to spread beyond the company, to that employee’s family and friends.
Yammer: Yammer, an internal social network designed specifically for business can be used as a way to recognize employees privately, within the company’s network.
Rypple: Rypple is an internal social management platform specifically built for recognition. People within the company can instantly recognize and reward one another for doing great work.
The company blog: The company blog can be a great way to highlight the accomplishments of an individual employee or specific team/department. This is another form of public recognition and allows for the use of pictures and comments from others.
Virtual gifts: A new use of social media to recognize top employees is virtual gifts. Companies such as, KangoGift, enables an employer to send a digital gift to an employee’s cell phone. The gifts can then be redeemed inside a store or restaurant.
Linkedin: Linkedin is great tool for companies to recognize employees publicly. This can be accomplished through the company’s corporate Linkedin page, through referrals and most recently, with endorsing an employee’s skill on their Linkedin page.
Lesson: Using social media as an outlet for employee recognition is beneficial for business.
The use of a social media resource is a way of reaching out to contacts outside of the direct internal network available, it improves company morale, reduces turnover with increased employee happiness and is a way of free marketing in real time communication.
What does your company use to recognize successful employees? Which use of social media would you personally prefer?
Submitted By: Tara Busse, SMBP, University of Waterloo
To contact the author of this entry please email at: tara.catherine.s@gmail.com
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.