Company Facebook: How to transfer engagement from social media into the company

Social networks have several very important advantages – they allow for:

• multidirectional communication;
• direct and real-time communication;
• very efficient flow of information;
• the opportunity to have a say on any issue;
• what is particularly important – participation in content creation;
• a sense of influencing the surrounding reality.

How to transfer these mechanisms to the company, where we take on completely different roles than in our private lives? And do we really need Facebook at work?

Maybe many of you do not feel it yet, but by 2025, as much as 75% of the workforce will be represented by Generation Y*, who expect access to social media from companies and efficient communication, preferably in real time. In our case, we do not have to wait until 2025. Currently, most of the employees of Grupa Pracuj belong to Generation Y, whose requirements we strive to meet. Which of these is the most serious challenge? Definitely building engagement.

What determines the success of company social networks?

In my opinion, a few things:

• openness to employees’ ideas;
• engaging them in co-creating content;
• lack of censorship;
• user-friendly language;
• authenticity.

We implemented our social network at the end of 2013. The breakthrough moment, where we observed a significant increase in emplo’s interest, was one video that started it all. It was a video from the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ campaign (a grassroots global campaign supporting ALS patients) that was spontaneously made by our office employees in Katowice. In the video, representatives from the regional sales office poured icy water on themselves, challenging colleagues from other branches to a duel. When asked whether we would publish this material on the company’s social network, there could only be one answer: YES.

What was the continuation of this story?

Within 9 days (from August 25 to September 2, 2014), 10 out of 13 branches participated in the action, including Headquarters employees. A total of 202 people were challenged to a duel (out of approximately 400 company employees). We published a total of 36 videos made by employees on emplo, featuring 83 individuals, including the CFO, sales director, and regional branch managers. Within less than 2 weeks, the videos were viewed 3265 times, received 549 likes, and were commented on 104 times.

Of course, you may say – this was just one campaign unrelated to any corporate communication campaign. Yes, that’s true, but thanks to such content, we tell our employees: ‘We are open to what you have to say! You can use emplo in many different ways. You will find information about the company (company groups), interests of your work colleagues (social groups), as well as specialized information from the field of knowledge that interests you (knowledge bases).’ This diversity and the possibility of co-creating the company’s social network translates into a greater interest and engagement of users.

The result we achieved through open, dialogue-oriented communication? Currently, around 90% of employees use emplo each month, and our corporate social network is becoming the main communication channel within the Pracuj Group.