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In today’s guest blog Rachel Allen, head of communications at London Overground Rail Operations and one of PR Week’s “29 under 29″ takes a look at social media and internal communications 

Jon Clements asked me to write a guest spot here after reading my musings on my Diary of an internal communicator blog.

Earlier this year I wrote a dissertation on social media’s role in internal communication as part of a post-graduate diploma in Internal Communications Management. As this was an academic study I needed to ensure my references reflected this.

Step forward Twitter. This incredible site connected me with professional communicators who sent me their thoughts, blogs and shared sources. Fast forward to now and my dissertation is done, studying completed and graduation invite is on the fridge.

Here is a brief glimpse into some thoughts around social media’s role in internal communication.

There are seemingly endless invitations at the moment to social media seminars. Communicators are being deluged with ‘must-reads’ and ‘must-sees’ to help get buy-in at board level.

There’s certainly a lot of noise around, but what is the impact on internal communication? The key point for me is that social media is here. It has been for a while. It isn’t new anymore. Even if you don’t yet have a strategy in place within your organisation and even better have it linked to your internal communications, your employees are already using collaboration sites in their personal lives. This impacts internal communication as people are used to communicating in this way and expect to be able to do the same at work.

Love (2007) warns: “It’s important not to get caught up in the hype - new media won’t suit every person or organisation, in the same way traditional media aren’t fit for everyone.” However Love points out the impact it can have as being “often exceptionally useful with remote workforces. If you can harness it properly, blogs and wikis are often a great way to pull those people into a community”.

That’s exactly what internal communication is about - choosing and providing tools for employees to have two-way conversations.

According to a global Nielson (2009) report, social networks and blogs account for one of every 11 minutes spent online and UK-based mobile web users are most likely to visit a social network using a handset. So the frequent calls we see to ban access to sites such as Facebook seems naive as employees will always find a way.

Social networking offers employees the option to maintain relationships and have access to people at all levels all the time (aka horizontal networks). Communicators strive for this already. Herrero (2008) says that although we usually base communication processes around the formal structure of an organisation, that ‘this isn’t how influence spreads’. He says that 75% of interactions happen through horizontal communication and terms it ‘networkcracy’.

Social media provides ways for employees to interact, what benefit does that bring? Fraser (2009) says that: “When you have horizontal networks it’s a much more efficient way to find true expertise…outside and in all kinds of unlikely, unexpected places. Web 2.0 harnesses what is often called collective intelligence and the way you harness that is by going horizontally.”

Whether your communications go horizontally, vertically or any other direction, the key is the need for comms professionals to be aware of how employees are interacting and ensuring internal communication maximises that desire to share information.

So in a nutshell, I think social media’s role in internal communication should be kept simple. It s role is to help improve interaction between employees at all levels. I think it needs to be demystified and viewed as another tool in our toolbox to help employees communicate with each other and the outside world.

Sources:

Fraser,  Matthew and Dutta, Soumitra (2009). Quoted in Turning Social Networking on its head: where horizontal and vertical networks meet. International Business Times published 23 February 2009. (@frasermatthew)

Herrero Leandro, Dr. (2008). CEO of The Chalfront Project. Quoted in Melcrum (2008). Viral Communication in the Workplace. Practical new technologies for engaging employees and changing behaviours. Melcrum Publishing, London, UK.

Love, Helen (2007). Independent consultant and former Internal Communications Manager at Microsoft UK, quoted in How to use social media to engage employees (2007), Melcrum Publishing Limited. London, UK.

Nielson Co (2009). March 2009. Global Faces and Networked Places. A Nielson Report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint. Published by Nielson.