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From the Field By Valerie Neff Newitt Most young professionals have career aspirations, a casual Friday wardrobe and age-related savvy when in comes to electronic media. “Surfing the Web” sounded absolutely intergalactic to the workforce of 1980. But today, e-mail, Web sites, text messaging and blogs are part and parcel of common experience. So it makes sense to take that social media “vocabulary” and define it in terms of workplace communications. Click here for the social media tipsheet.
In fact, it made so much sense to Immaculata (Pa.) University faculty member Stacy Linkins that she wrote her doctoral thesis about it. Leading a course this month on “Communications in the Business Environment” at the university and teaching a course in Applied Communications at the university next fall, Linkins suggests that companies should tap into the communications preferences of their junior employees to more effectively draw them into a 2-way corporate culture. “Five years ago, e-mail was the preferred form of communication with the 18- to 22-year-old group moving into the workforce. Today, instant messaging has taken over,” says Linkins with an eye to understanding the preference. “The reason is that younger people, having been brought up the electronic age, have less tolerance for drag time. They thrive on immediacy. The right time for them is ‘right now.’” You can imagine, then, given that mindset, the frustration level that might result when a newly-recruited employee is asked to contact a human resources office for vital information, if forced to leave a voicemail -- or worse -- is put on hold for what may seem like some minor sector of eternity. “Fortunately, social media allows so many new and effective ways to disseminate information,” says Linkins. “The smart move for a company is to attract good employees and keep them involved and motivated with resources they can access and use effectively. “So, let’s go back to the human resources example. It makes sense for an HR department to set up an interactive internal Web site. Put job postings and ascending-level positions with qualifications and job goals on there. It’s a way for people to trend upward and keep the vision and goals of every level in mind. Add to that streaming video with up-to-date, accurate information about who to contact, how, when, and what information to bring along. This is the comfort zone of younger employees.” Linkins is quick to point out that social media should be used as a tool toward communications --- not as the sole means of communications. “Research shows that younger workers may actually seek out non-human interaction because they are so comfortable with the anonymous, information-gathering they have seen so much of on internet search engines, etc. It might seem that the human interaction can be totally supplanted. So it is important that social media is used as a tool to bring people into real face-to-face interaction as well. We must use electronic communication to be the jumping-off point for team building.” The best use of instant messaging on a company or department-wide scale may be right on employees’ cyber desktops. It can be used to send a team-building question, to be answered during huddles later in the day. It’s also an effective way to receive pinpointed immediate feedback on a particular issue, with replies electronically catalogued and posted to a company or department blog for later mass consumption. We’ve all seen the streaming headlines running along the bottom of cable news channels. Linkins suggests that streaming information bars that can be clicked on or off might be useful in announcing new products, programs, pricing, information sessions, motivational thoughts. It might even be one way to reinvent the old wall-hung, wooden “Suggestion Box,” with employee suggestions heralded and shared across a galloping headline ribbon. “Today, companies are realizing the utter necessity of building teams internally. The reason? When you are part of a team with personal connections, you start to care. Care about the shared goals and objectives, the work, the results. You work not only for yourself, but for your team as well. Social media, then, can enhance those team-bonding moments. Companies can enhance the human connections with photos blogs of employee activities, informational blogs about seminars and standout suggestions. Employers can set up departmental chat rooms allowing employees to share problems and solutions. It’s all about growing a support system.” Critics of electronic communication may decry the impersonal, distant applications. But Linkins is strong in her view that technology can -- and must-- bring people together in corporate settings. “It may seem harder today to work together because it has become so easy to be individualized and tune each other out,” she notes. “But creative use of online capabilities build common purpose and a sense of community. It can keep the corporate rhetoric from going stale. It allows for fresh ideas and a constant exchange of questions and answers. It means that while team members may not always be in the same room, the same building, or, in extreme cases, the same country, they can still be very much ‘together.’ ” Contact: Stacy Linkins at Slinkins@Immaculata.edu
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