How much of an impact does your opinion have? What are the repercussions of them? What avenues do you have?
These questions and many others have been on people’s minds for generations. In an ever changing environment we have now recently become a technology driven and communication focused society where social media is at the forefront.
“Social media continues to mature as both a channel and a market in its own right. It’s even becoming an agent for social change. Technology made it possible for us to connect, and now social media has made it possible to do it in a more organic, human way. It’s hard to believe, but Facebook and LinkedIn are each coming up on their 10th year, and Twitter is now six years old. Together, they’ve fundamentally changed how we engage with one another online.”
We are now evolving into the transition between personal use to business profitability.
I would like to take this time to focus in on the banking industry, specifically Scotiabank. An example of embracing social media can be seen by their Scotiabank Live internal website launch dedicated to listening and understand the employee’s point of view on various topics created by the employee’s.
The most recent issue that effected all employees was the company’s change in employee benefits.
“The impact of employee demographics on benefits plans is significant. And by demographics I mean not only the standard measures such as age and sex but also family status, culture, diversity and general health…. employee demographics influence every aspect of employee benefits programs. Yet most plan sponsors—other than basic statistics such as average age, male/female split and/or number of single employees versus those with dependents—do not have a complete picture of their employee population and how changes in this profile will impact their benefits plans in the future.”
The new mandatory benefits package resulted in an increased cost which comes out of their after tax dollars. This caused many people to express their feelings online through the website.
On one hand the positive side to this was the result in the company’s revision of the original benefits to give more options for employees. Unfortunately as this method of communication is so new some employees lost their professionalism which cost them disciplinary action due to their negative connotations and language towards the company.
Lessons for others:
– Above all social media is a tool to be utilized in the business world with the same professionalism and ethical standards in the work place.
Web References:
What Does It Really Mean to Be a Social Business?
The most significant employee benefits plan issue: It’s not what you think
ScotiaLive
Scotiabank
Submitted by: Sarah Kalyan – SMBP student University of Waterloo. To contact the author of this entry please email sarah.kalyan@hotmail.ca
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.