When you’re a global company with employees stationed around the world it’s easy to assume employees in one country know little to nothing about employees or happenings in other offices, but at Unitron, it’s quite the opposite.

According to their global LinkedIn profile, it’s “a great thing to be a part of a culture that thrives on making the unexpected happen, and where team members’ work together to go the extra mile for customers.” The “company that designs and manufactures really great hearing instruments” has more than 20 offices around the world with their corporate headquarters located in Kitchener, Ontario.

One of the things that keeps teams at Unitron engaged and up-to-date with happenings within the organization is their implementation of Salesforce Chatter. The enterprise social network affords all of Unitron’s employees the ability to network, share and collaborate across borders and timezones easily and instantly. The platform has browser, desktop and mobile capabilities.

Every employee with a company email address is connected to the internal social platform and are encouraged to use it to share successes, collaborate, build relationships and stay up-to-date on the latest happening in and around the organization while also cutting down on the amount of clutter in your email inbox.

According to Alessia Musso’s blog on bananatag.com, “An active social media presence gives employees a voice outside of their cubicles, teams, and departments. It offers employees an avenue to celebrate their organization, express happiness at a company event or share exciting moments throughout the day. Employees also get a new source of engaging and exciting content to share, plus a new feedback channel to voice their opinions and ideas for the organization.”

Gone are the days of having to wait for the monthly internal newsletter to come out to see photos from that great event happening in France or Spain, now, Unitron employees get to see photos the day the event is happening. Much like Facebook, Chatter also allows users to like, comment and share the posts.

It’s not just about relationship building. Employees are also using the application to ask questions about projects they are working on which helps not only the person asking the question learn, but other employees throughout the organization. It helps to eliminate the fear of forgetting a key person on an email – employees instead can start a new group within the platform (inviting their own members) which will act as a message board and will store all of the information in one central location.

But those aren’t the only benefits. In this Huffington Post blog, Paula Berg outlines “10 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Social Media to Communicate With Employees” and I’m sure there are at least ten more.

Lessons for Others

While the thought of employees using social media to engage with the company may still be scary for some HR departments, it’s helping many industries to get the most out of their employees. It’s giving them a vehicle in which to ask questions when they don’t know who to ask. It’s allowing employees to feel like they are apart of something. It’s connecting employees across boarders by giving them the opportunity to share the happenings in their offices or their lives which helps build relationships and bonds. While some may worry social media is a time waster, a strong case can also be made that it’s actually increasing productivity by giving people easier access to the information they need.

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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