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Are you ready for the employee of the future? Social media isn’t just for posting selfies while hiking, or sharing pictures of your food. Employees are forcing employers to embrace the social media effect, but this isn’t news.
What is new and exciting is the number of social media network enhancements that are being made, which are making networks more relevant to the workplace, and this is how millennials are changing Social Media’s future. Gasp! Is it possible that social media could boost employee productivity, instead of becoming a brain drain in-between tasks?
This is welcome news to office places where the majority of employees waste more than an hour every workday on social media and other distractions, instead of working.
Facebook’s Workplace
The workplace is Facebook’s new push to capture the real-time collaboration at work, in a virtual space. The great part is it’s built on a platform that employees are intimately familiar with; it’s Facebook without the cat pictures and personal stuff that’s so easily distracting.
Even without workplace’s walled-off environment, a lot of employees are already using Facebook groups to communicate. As a freelancer, I’ve been amazed at how many companies that I consult to add me to a Facebook group for real-time communication.
Yik Yak: Organizational Communication Training for College Students Preparing to Enter the Workforce
If you aren’t familiar with Yik Yak, you probably aren’t a recent a college grad. Virtually every college intern I work with spends a ton of time on the platform, communicating with fellow students. While the location-based social media platform isn’t quite in the same league as Facebook’s 1.1 billion users, it’s becoming a gateway platform for college students preparing to collaborate in the workforce.
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The location-based nature of the platform creates a productive platform for communication. Yes, I admit it’s used a lot for hookups, but there’s also the benefit of anonymity. Students learn how to post content that gains “upvotes” and is popular, funny or useful to the people around them. Think of Yik Yak as Facebook’s best frat buddy. It serves many purposes, but collaboration and conversation with people that students can digitally relate to (with significant privacy) is a powerful tool for bridging the gap between social media, and workplace or organizational collaboration platforms.
LinkedIn for Training?
It’s old news that LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for busy professionals looking to make connections with others in their industry. What is new and exciting is the LinkedIn LEARNING platform. The social network your employees (especially your executives, marketing and sales teams) are intimately familiar with has become a virtual brain-trust for individuals and teams looking for ways to gain knowledge.
And it isn’t superficial web videos or tutorials. The training modules hit heavy-hitting topics like Web Dev, Information Technology, Marketing and Sales. Both soft skills and technical expertise can be gained from the platform, which is why hundreds of industry experts have jumped onto the platform to create killer on-demand learning courses built around their experiences.
Whisper for Anonymous Company Feedback
The “suggestion box” is an old-school relic at this stage. Many companies, based on employee engagement, use anonymous social media platforms, like Whisper, to create back channels for anonymous, private employee feedback. Truly anonymous, on-demand feedback channels are critical for improving and maintaining employee engagement.
Employees are demanding a voice in the things that shape their work life. Companies that fail to provide a meaningful voice for their team members risk losing talent to the competition. By embracing social media, and learning to navigate the benefits, while minimizing the distractions, companies can maximize productivity, create opportunities for instant praise and recognition, and identify problems in real-time.
