At L’Oréal, happiness starts at home.

L’Oréal  is a global leader in cosmetics, beauty and grooming with companies in more than 70 countries representing over 130 product lines.  The company is highly revered as a desired place to work and has  been awarded with several “top employer” awards  globally from various respected entities including Forbes magazine , Glassdoor  and Montréal’s Top Employers .   There are several factors that have contributed to this top employer recognition, one of which is the strong, positive corporate culture they’ve manifested through employee engagement and empowerment via social media.   

Although counterintuitive for many companies, L’Oréal has embraced the use of social media by it employees.  In fact, it encourages it.  Social media for most companies is perceived as a distraction and a hindrance to productivity.  As a result, social media policy is typically created with the objective of restricting its usage.   

Conversely, L’Oréal, views social media  policy as an opportunity to enlighten employees on its benefits and an opportunity to shed light on the tools and tactics that can be applied to use it effectively to shape desired behaviours. 

 

Through the use of social media, L’Oréal has substantially increased the level of employee engagement which has fostered a positive corporate culture.   With positive employee engagement comes heightened motivation, productivity and the increased likelihood of employees becoming brand ambassadors.

L’Oréal has initiated a myriad of  social media strategies to create a positively engaged workforce inspired to share their experiences with the outside world. 

In a recent podcast, Alexander Onish, L‘Oréal’s Digital Employer Branding Manager provided significant insight into some of these strategies.

• A key strategy was a hashtag campaign whereby two hashtags were created #LifeatL‘Oréal  and #L’OréalCommunity to encourage employees to share their work life experiences and social experiences with colleagues both inside and outside of work.   Employees empowered to share their own perspectives on their working life,  inundate social media sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram with daily glimpses of employee life from L’Oréal offices all over the world.
•  Social media platforms also used to share positive experiences in terms of various corporate initiatives designed to give back to the community. Giving back to communities and consumers has always been a core value at L’Oreal.
• L‘Oréal has encouraged employee feedback through the use of public employer feedback forums like Glassdoor  and Love Mondays .  With the understanding that such public forums are commonly used by former employees whose comments tend to be negative in nature;   L’Oreal saw it as an opportunity to encourage employees to use such forums to provide anonymous feedback, empowering them be constructive using social media as a  mechanism for the improvement of policies and work environment.  As a result, employees feel heard and truly part of the future of the company.
• Employee engagement is also encouraged through the use of Youtube.    Employees from all over the globe post videos sharing various work life experiences.

 

The results of the social media strategies to increase employee engagement have been most positive for the company.

The sense of community that has resulted from the sharing of employee experiences of community initiatives has drawn the attention of millenials.  Studies show that the feeling of community and altruism is an important factor for millenials when considering an employer.

The hashtag campaign led to an increase of 200,000 unique impressions on instagram.  Employees from around the world have become employer brand ambassadors, using social media to share their positive work experiences on a daily basis.  This has resulted in considerable increase in conversion rates on the career website which has attracted top talent.

Employee feedback on public social media sites such as glassdoor has led to improved policies and procedures within the firm.   Employees feel engaged and part of the future development of the firm.

The various awards that L’Oreal has received as “Top Employer”  are proof of the success of the social media strategies for heightened employee engagement.

 

 

Lessons for Others

Companies shouldn’t see Social Media as a hindrance to employee productivity and engagement but see it as a tool to strengthen employer branding.

Happiness starts at home.  Happy employees lead to positive corporate culture, heightened motivation and productivity.

 

Social media can be a very effective tool to:

1. increase employee satisfaction and engagement
2. increase employee feedback and inspire positive policy and procedure change
3. attract top talent by giving the outside world a view into work life
4. strengthen employer brand

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.

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