The best organizations are building a sense that all employees are in it together, sharing both the challenges and rewards of working. They are using social media to connect their employees to their managers and colleagues — especially those who work at home.

Insights From the 2013 Change and Communication ROI Study

A Road Map to Community Building With Social Media

Social media is an effective way to build community, but only 56% of companies are using it to communicate with employees on topics such as organizational culture, team building or innovation.

Effectiveness in Community BuildingWe measured how effective companies are at building community among their employees and asked about their social media journey. As companies become more adept at using social media, their online community-building efforts also tend to improve.

If your company is new to social media, where should you start? Most companies begin by using social media to communicate with employees who work away from the office — for example, field- and home-based workers. The best use social media as part of a broader communication strategy and measure to see if it’s working.

Are Social Media Efforts Working? Most companies don’t start measuring whether social media is meeting their objectives until they are maxing out. As companies begin to measure their efforts, they gain more clarity on whether social media is truly cost-effective and supporting workplace productivity.

This might hurt Making progress Maxing out What’s nextMeasurement

Workplace productivityCost-effectiveness

No Yes

Assessing the Effectiveness of Social Media Since few organizations actually measure social media effectiveness, the relative popularity of instant messaging and streaming audio/video could simply be due to their easier implementation. Organizations that rely more heavily on social media are more likely to have the required metrics in place to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of their efforts.

Remote workers are a growing segment of the workforce. They are typically more engaged and productive than employees who work in a traditional office setting. Building a shared experience is one way for organizations to deepen ties with remote workers and to improve collaboration among all employees.

Yet only 23% of organizations are effective at building a shared experience with their remote workforce.

How to Engage a Dispersed Workforce

Managers play an important role in engaging and retaining a dispersed workforce.

Remote workers are looking for clear communication, integrity and coaching from their managers.

Companies that excel at building this shared experience are more likely to have effective manager training in these four key areas, which are of high importance to dispersed workers. Managing and

communicatingwith a dispersed

workforce

Delivering keymessages in ameaningful way

Listeningcarefully

to differentpoints of view

Supporting theorganization’s

vision andvalues

High shared experience with dispersed workersNo shared experience with dispersed workers

20% 12% 13% 14%

87% 82% 83% 82%

Manager training effectiveness

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Leadership journal or blog

HR or other function journal or blog

Employee journals or blogs

Instant messaging

Enhanced online employee pro�les

Collaboration sites

Twitter

Yammer/Jive/Chatter

Streaming audio or video

Social networks

Video-sharing site

SMS messaging

Apps or other mobileapproaches

30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

% e

ffec

tive

% use

Among the companies who aren’t using social media, one out of five are able to build community among their workers.

Most companies get started by using social media to communicate with remote workers. However, we see a dip in this group’s ability to build community. We suspect the lack of a fully developed strategy is to blame.

For most, the next step involves using social media to influence collaboration or culture. As companies increase their use of social media, they become more disciplined in their efforts and achieve better results.

Community-building effectiveness increases significantly when companies use social media to achieve at least three objectives — for example, team building, sharing feedback with leaders and innovation.

The pros expand their use of social media in areas (e.g., organizational performance) that were traditionally dominated by one-way communication.

Waitand See

This MightHurt

MakingProgress

MaxingOut

What’sNext?

22%effective 14%

effective

27%effective

47%effective 44%

effective