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It sure does. Yes, thanking someone in person is the best way if that’s what makes sense. But it’s not so black and white in today’s business world.

What if your choice is thanking someone in person two weeks from now or sending a note via the intranet or emailing seconds after an employee does something great? Oh, just pick up the phone and call, you say? What if the person is simply unreachable? Is a voice mail better than an email? I don’t know for sure, but I know that I’m not alone in intensely disliking long voice mails. I feel like I have to listen just because I don’t want to miss something important, even though it’s pretty rare for people to leave big news on a voice mail.

Of course, I’m not saying that online recognition should completely replace all other forms of recognition forever. Online recognition has the best results when it’s part of a comprehensive recognition program that includes all sorts of interactions – from formal memos to live town hall meetings and informal discussions.

Here are three reasons to expand your recognition program online:
1 – If you operate on a global level, your employee relations program has to operate on that same level, and technology is a big part of that. The bottom line is that employees appreciate recognition, and when they feel appreciated, they’re more likely to leave your customers with the same feeling.
2 – Online communications are preferred by younger generations and by some older ones. I’ve been with many clients who keep checking their emails while saying something like, “I’m sorry. I have to check. I’m waiting for my boss to tell me how the launch went.” When the email comes through, they say, “Oh, she said it went great. That’s a relief. Now I can move on and focus on what I’m doing now.” Another lesson: Sometimes any communication is seen as recognition.
3 – The world operates on immediate gratification these days. Just as your customer wants whatever it is they want immediately, employees crave almost immediate gratitude for getting the job done well.

What qualifies as online recognition? Tribe works with a number of big global brands to launch micro-sites for giving global “shout-outs” up and down the ranks to sharing stories that make heroes out of employees who don’t usually win the spotlight and providing training for managers on how to make the most of online recognition.

Do you have someone who pushes back on recognition programs?
We hear a lot of, “Managers just need to say thank you. We don’t need a program for that.” Actually, not all managers are created equal. Some have a natural talent for recognizing people, and some don’t. Having multiple methods for making sure someone gets the recognition they deserve is a good way to hedge your bets and make sure everyone wins.

There are tons of books on recognition, but an interesting read is The Carrot Principle about a ten-year study of 200,000 managers and employees. This research says that companies in the top quartile for employee recognition, as determined by the surveyed workers, “earned a significantly higher return on equity, return on assets, and operating margin.” (You can read all about the study in The Carrot Principle, out in 2007, a New York Times best seller. The second version came out last year.)

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A lot of companies we work with are using their intranets to leverage their corporate brand and communicate their culture. After a couple years of being numbers focused, leadership is recognizing that engagement plays a key role in future success.

So, if you’re giving your intranet a tune-up to align it – and employees – with the company’s vision, then consider the following:

- What content will be on the site?
- You don’t want to bog employees down with another task.
- Your first shot has got to be your best shot.
- Recognition should be a part of it.
- It’s all about engagement/teamwork.

What content will be on the site?
People sometimes like to separate engagement and tools from HR materials. A separate HR portal may be a more inviting resource for a spouse to find answers to family-related HR questions

You don’t want to bog employees down with another task.
The price of entry for a successful intranet is that the site must be easy to navigate and user friendly. If it’s not, then it will become another part of the communications clutter that employees often have to weed through to get the information they need to do their jobs. A common barrier for communicators looking to leverage this channel in their organization is that people don’t want to add another task to their already busy day unless it benefits them.

Your first shot has got to be your best shot.
Your first shot is your best shot at getting employees to interact with employees – and leadership – on your intranet. When employees check out a website for the first time, it’s like they’re visitors to a foreign country. They’re seeing everything fresh and new for the first time. If the experience is not good, they won’t travel to that destination again without a lot of hand-holding and convincing. We’ve even worked with some companies who walk away from or shelve a technology indefinitely to get rid of bad juju.

Recognition should be a part of it.
Employees crave recognition and visibility, and social media can be a great tool for promoting both. Don’t be afraid to call out achievements and success stories from across the business. Nothing will make employees jump on board faster than seeing leadership actively supporting the new channel.

It’s all about engagement/teamwork.
Start by interviewing employees and leadership about what they want from the new tool. Then, deliver content and tools that align what employees need with the organization’s business goals. When you strike that balance, employees want to use the site, and, when they do use the site, they’ll be working toward fulfilling the purpose of the company. You’ll really start to see results when employees are having conversations and solving problems that otherwise would have gone unanswered.

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The New York Times just ran an article called, “Antisocial Networking?” in the Sunday Styles section. The cut line reads: Experts wonder if technology keeps children connected or diminishes their ability to read social cues and interact the old-fashioned way.

My take-away
The idea I took away from it is that people are worrying that friendship the way we know it is a dying breed due to social networking. I think that’s probably true, but I’m not sure how important that is.

Some of the parents in the NYT article agreed, saying their introverted and shy children were finding the courage to connect online or their busy teen was using it to schedule time with friends. Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, author of “Making Friends: A guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Child’s Friendships,” says: I think it’s possible to say that the electronic media is helping kids to be in touch much more and for longer. And the kids themselves are head over heels in love with technology.

I think that’s true. Tribe’s own research has revealed that half of kids in Gen Z prefer a technological gift over something “unplugged.” If businesses capitalize on this idea, then that’s something they can take to the bank.

Old ways of doing things get old for a reason
It’s true kids text about play dates instead of knocking on doors, but letter writing used to be the main form of communication, too. And we’ve moved past that pretty well. I’m not defiling letter writing for those of you that think it’s a lost art. I agree there is an art to it, but I also like to think that each generation improves on the ideas from the last one. This feels like a natural progression to me.

And, companies that facilitate this natural progression are sure to win on many fronts regarding:
1. Innovation. Social media helps people around the world, in a different building or in the same office to share ideas in a free flow form. Thinking up great ideas is as simple as getting smart people together in a room, but now you don’t need the room. You just need smart people.
2. Engagement. Technology is how younger generations connect with each other inside and outside of work, so they’ll expect to use these tools at work. PowerPoints will become obsolete in the near future. So will long meetings, as they become more focused and productive. In fact, most of our clients are adding interactivity to their portals to facilitate that engagement.
3. Recognition. Social media is a great outlet for peer-to-peer recognition and for recognizing people who aren’t all in the same building. It’s an opportunity to say thanks and to say what you’re thanking them for, so they know what they did right.
4. Development. Social media can make development tools available in a fun, simple style that engages people. And when employees see a clear path for themselves within the company, they’re that much more likely to become engaged.
5. Community. People want to be a part of a community, and in a sense, that’s the whole reason social media has been so successful. People will continue to find new ways to connect with one another, and successful companies will provide the tools for employees to do so. Relationships are formed differently, with more and more friendships being formed between people who have never met.

Gen Y and Gen Z connect by sharing
My colleague’s child just thought up an idea to stop the oil spill in the Gulf. He wrote it up and sent it off to BP. He’s 10, but I heard his idea and thought it was pretty darn good. I bet he gets some sort of response. And, as he grows up, he’s going to continue to use the Internet as a channel for sharing ideas. Someday he could help solve world hunger or help protect the earth by solving a problem, like the oil spill of the future – whatever that is.

A true sign of success is when something “just is”
Despite all the times I just said social media, at Tribe, we don’t use the phrase “social media” much anymore. Well, at least not as much as we used to. And, trust me, we’re into it, but we’ve adjusted our language to focus more on the channel’s value and benefits than the channel itself.

We’ve found that talking about “social media” distracts people from why they should use it in the first place. It’s too new. It’s too 2009. It’s too fast. It’s too raw. It’s too time intensive. Also, people tend to immediately think “Facebook” or “Twitter” when those sites are just the tip of the iceberg.

When talking with clients, I’ve taken to using social media and online communications interchangeably. To us, social media is simply online communications, but dished up in a two-way format rather than more traditional static one-way communications. The spirit of interchange and idea sharing are what takes “online” to the next level of socialness.

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Now’s the time to help your employees get out of the recession rut. And the business can’t move forward if your employees aren’t.

Is your company losing money because people are in a holding pattern?
Corporate employees across the country are experiencing a resigned sense of stagnation. Tribe fielded research in the first quarter of 2010 with corporate employees in three generations, Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y, and found a lethargic do-nothing spirit among workers of all ages. Typical comments from respondents include, “Nothing’s getting better or worse,” “I’m just going through the motions,” and “I’m sort of stuck in neutral.” When asked if they thought it was more likely they’d be promoted or fired in the next year, 77 percent responded “neither one.”

Management has a plan, but employees don’t know it.
One internal communications manager with a Fortune 100 company described a dangerous divide between the great majority of employees and those at the top with clear plans for how they’re transforming the company for more profitability. When asked if he thought the management at his company (a global brand) had a strategy for recovery, he said, “No, I don’t think they have a plan. It worries me.”

During qualitative interviews, many top leaders revealed that they thought employees understood the business reason behind layoffs. In reality, employees aren’t always so clear on the reasoning behind many changes. One reason for this is that employees have trouble separating changes caused by the recession from necessary changes that need to happen, recession or not. The recession is becoming the scapegoat for necessary business transformations to grow the business.

They want to know what’s going on. Especially the younger employees.
Tribe’s survey asked “If your company could do one thing to make you feel better about where you work, what would it be?” The two most common answers, in almost equal numbers, were more money and more communication. New Generation employees offered twice as many comments as Boomers about wanting increased or improved communication.

One way to open communication is a leadership blog.
It’s relatively simple to establish a leadership blog, by the CEO or another top visionary. Tribe’s process for developing a leadership blog includes a topic matrix and editorial calendar, to give key topics the right visibility across the year.

The risk in not having frequent communication from the top down is that employees assume no news is bad news. A leadership blog can efficiently fill that vacuum of communication and help employees feel in the loop and on board.

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Finally getting your company’s social media plan off the ground can be very rewarding. You put in a lot of time and energy and are excited to see things really start to take off. It starts off slow at first, but you eventually start to see some action. You continue with what you’re doing, but it seems like things just start to stall. So what are the next steps? Here are three ways to refresh your social media presence:

• Respond to comments. Many of the most successful blogs are driven by user comments. The reason for this is that the articles spark conversation among readers. That’s why a blog shouldn’t be about just you or your company. People generally will not take the time to participate in a conversation that you started about how great you are. Instead, engage readers by shifting the conversation to their needs. Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to jump into the conversation. Otherwise, all you have is a media site without the social part.

• Listen to feedback. First the bad news: You’re probably not going to get your blog right on the first try. For any number of reasons, your content is getting the readership that you would. But that’s also the good news. Many people just throw in the towel thinking, “Social media is just a waste of time.” You have to take the time to listen to feedback, but that’s only the first step. Then, you need to make changes to create a more positive user experience. Readers will feel much more engaged if you respond to their comment and make changes based on their suggestions.

• Be prepared to evolve. Quicken Loans’ WHAT’S THE DIFF blog is written by employees for employees and clients, so what you read is what you get if you’re a potential client trying to get a feel for the company. The blog was started about three years ago as a tool for HR recruiting, to reach out to potential employees and show them what it’s like to work at Quicken Loans. “That has become less of a focus, said Kelly LaVaute, Quicken Loans’ social media manager and one of the blog’s editors, “but a lot of people who come into interview have read THE DIFF.” (For more on Quicken Loans’ WHAT’S THE DIFF blog, read “Employees are a powerful voice in social media.”)

Now that you’ve launched your social media plan, you have to follow through and keep posting new content. Social media has to be timely, so if you’re not updating your content, it won’t be long before people stop coming back.

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Some people just don’t know how to send an email. FROM TYPING IN ALL CAPS to an unnecessary ‘reply all,’ it can be frustrating to have a conversation with someone through email who doesn’t know the proper etiquette. But like all things, most employees with poor email etiquette don’t do so intentionally. They simply don’t know that they’re doing anything wrong at all. If email etiquette and professionalism are becoming a problem, don’t let things go unnoticed. Give employees the training they need to be successful, and then you can deal with any issues on a case-by-case basis. As many companies are putting together their social media guidelines for the first time, this can be a great opportunity to refresh employees on email etiquette.

Among younger generations, email is not always the preferred method of communication. The problems arise when people use text-messaging shorthand in professional business communications. As social media tools become more common in the workplace, we can expect to see email being used less and less.

So what does a professional email look like?
A professional email isn’t complicated. It should be very clear and to the point. If someone asks you questions in an email, answer every one that you can and acknowledge any that you can’t. When you expect someone to take action based on your email, it’s important to make it absolutely clear what you expect of that person. And don’t forget about the subject line. When you are writing an email, you spend most of your time looking at the body—not the subject. But when someone receives an email, the subject and sender will be the first thing they see. The person receiving the email should instantly know what the email is about after reading the subject.

Once you’ve crafted a clear and concise email, do not hit send. Take a deep breath and read back through the email. Did you spell the person’s name correctly? If there are any squiggly red lines under any of your words, find out why. Spell check isn’t always right, but don’t just ignore it. If the email is being sent to a client or customer, spelling and punctuation mistakes come across as unprofessional.

Don’t get creative
Whatever you do, don’t try and jazz up an email with a cool font or hip background image. Just keep it simple. Leave the design to the designers, and focus on sending an average looking email with above average clarity.

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Picture this: Your company is about to roll out some new changes that will affect all employees. How do you communicate that?

Employees always have an opinion about change, whether it’s good or bad. It can be simple or complex. It can directly impact them or not. It can be the understanding that they need to update paperwork for health benefits. Or knowing the process to be considered for promotion. The news and implementation of a restructuring or a merger are extreme examples of change.

Not surprisingly, employees at companies undergoing transition — such as restructuring, merger, or acquisition — trust management less and feel less informed than do employees at stable companies. Even companies that performed well last year have been challenged with putting their business plan and vision in context of world events for employees. Added stress and confusion in the marketplace increases the desire for information and communication.

Communications at the most difficult of times: Bankruptcy
When US Airways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002, they needed to communicate that message to more than 35,000 employees. To complicate matters, employees were sure to be grilled by passengers on how the bankruptcy would affect both their travel and safety. So on the day of the bankruptcy, US Airways launched all of their communications to employees. Employees at all levels of the company were given information about what the bankruptcy would mean, and how to communicate that message to passengers and business partners.

So what was the end result? During reorganization, US Airways was ranked first for 2002 in an annual airline-quality rating conducted by the University of Nebraska and Wichita State University. And seven months later, the company successfully emerged from Chapter 11. Had the company not handled their communications well, the results could have been drastically different.

Below are some thoughts on different degrees of “drawing back the curtain” and the impact of these approaches.

1. Do nothing or as little as possible
Companies sometimes go this route because they don’t want to rock the boat. The irony is it’s the most sure way to sink the Titanic. It takes years to build trust and a second to lose it. If employees feel leadership is not interested in their thoughts or contributions at a pivotal time in the company, then the damage can be permanent. Plus, the communications world we live in is not conducive to “going dark” – Twitter and Facebook have made sure of that. Some companies post company news on Twitter to be sure employees have access to the same information as consumers.

2. Tell people who have a need to know
This approach creates an inner and outer circle among employees. The closer you are to the center, the more special you feel. You can generate a lot of buzz this way, but you also can lose brand ambassadors in the making. Some companies are using “invitation only” campaigns to test social media with employees. This usually works pretty well because the end goal is to grow the network so that everyone is engaged. Another rule of thumb is that when it comes to cultural news and information, the need-to-know approach doesn’t work. At Tribe, we’ve found that the way that companies approach internal culture pieces correlates with how they engage employees as a whole. We’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies on culture books, and their approaches vary wildly. Some leadership teams involve employees extensively, even having them create the content themselves. Others tell the employees what the culture ought to be in a way that’s about as gentle as hitting a nail with a hammer.

3. Gather consensus from the beginning
It’s human nature to embrace change more when you’ve been included in the process. While this is a proven way to foster brand ambassadors, the risk is getting bogged down in the back and forth of gaining the buy-in from a large workforce. In the end, someone’s got to be in charge and that person or persons will have more facts and information at their fingertips. Another consideration is that the earlier you communicate news, the better prepared you need to be to move fast and follow through with sustaining communications. When it’s good news, you want to leverage it as long as possible. And, on the flip side, if it’s not good news, prompt and clear communications indicate grace and a vision for the future when under fire.

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More and more companies are exploring channels like Facebook and YouTube to engage consumers. But it can be a fine line between what employees do in their free time and what becomes public in the new world of social media. One forward-thinking step you can take is to create a social media guidelines document. Employees who are already active in social media will appreciate it, and it can be a great introduction for everyone else. And for companies that want employees to participate in corporate social media, this document is essential.

Before you start, get a feel for what other companies are doing. Fortunately, many companies put this information out there to share with the whole world. For starters, take a look at what these companies are doing:

• IBM: http://tinyurl.com/ibmsmpolicy
• Kodak: http://tinyurl.com/kodaksm
• Intel: http://tinyurl.com/intelsmpolicy

Once you start to get a feel for the type of material that’s out there, it’s time to look at it through the lens of your own corporate culture. For instance, a technology company is starting at a different place than a manufacturer. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, but the examples above should give you a good jumping off point.

Consider involving employees
Once you’ve put together a document, one high-level suggestion for releasing it is to start with a small group of employees. Share it with them and ask for feedback. A good thing to remember is that this is an organic document—social media is always changing, and it’s impossible to anticipate everything that will come up. But by giving employees a voice in the creation of the guidelines themselves, you’re setting a good precedent for the collaboration and sense of community that you can build with social media.

Some companies are putting goals in place for having x number of employees comfortable engaging directly with consumers through social media, or even encouraging employees to go out and blog on their own in their free time. And once employees are on-board, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can achieve.

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It’s an odd question, really, when you consider how many companies are shifting some of their advertising dollars to social media. Even when it makes good business sense from a sales perspective, sometimes leadership doesn’t see it that way for employees. In fact, what other new business tactic can you think of that companies don’t want employees to participate in?

I came across this article from Sharon Gaudin with some interesting stats on social media and productivity:

According to a study commissioned by Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm, 54% of U.S. companies say that they have banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace while on the job. The study also found that 19% of companies allow social networking use only for business purposes, while 16% allow limited personal use.

Only 10% of the 1,400 CIOs interviewed said that their companies allow employees full access to social networks during work hours.

So what message does that send to employees?

Well, it’s a trust issue. And the message is pretty clear: we don’t trust you. But are employees truly blocked from social media? Hardly, at least if you have a smart phone. So while a company may block social media, half the people may have access social networks anyway through their iPhone or BlackBerry.

It becomes a matter of how employees use these tools. While there are plenty of legitimate business reasons for participating in social media, the perception is still that social media is just games or personal interest. Overcoming this barrier is the turning point for many companies. As Alan Richardson pointed out on our LinkedIn discussion group, companies trust employees with corporate credit cards. So why not social media?

But isn’t there a business case to be made for banning social media?

Of course. But the reality is that no employee is 100% productive all of the time (Take it from the episode of The Office where Dwight says he isn’t wasting any company time, so Michael follows him around with a stopwatch).  The truth of the matter is that even if employees aren’t “wasting time” looking at Facebook, they are probably “wasting time” in other ways (And a side note, I think there’s tons of productivity and valuable knowledge sharing out there in social media). A coworker told me that she knows someone who works in an office where they have to grab an IT person to get access to the website. No web browsing in that place. So what’s an employee to do when he or she needs to rest their brain for a second? “I just stare at the wall,” said the employee.

Is staring at a wall more productive than social media?

I’d like to think not. LinkedIn is an incredible networking tool, and Twitter allows people to follow thought leaders in nearly every industry imaginable. Social networking has proven itself to work when it comes to engaging people, and companies that leverage that knowledge—even, and perhaps especially, if done internally—will see results in the future.

But all this thinking has tired me out. I guess I’ll just stare at the wall for a minute and relax.

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There’s so much talk out there right now about CEOs who are blogging, but there’s still a lot of mystery about who exactly these CEOs are. Obviously, a number of CEO bloggers do so behind a firewall, but here are three public examples of CEOs who are blogging—and doing it well, at that. (They aren’t in any particular order.)

Marriot CEO Bill Marriot — http://www.blogs.marriott.com/

Bill Marriot’s blog started in 2007, and has grown into a great high-level business blog. The blog itself is simple in appearance, but it comes across as clear. What does Bill Marriot say about the blog?

“I’d rather engage directly in dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company. So tell me what you think, and together we’ll keep Marriott on the Move!”

For other CEOs looking to blog, Marriott gives two pieces of advice:

• Make it personal
• Stay away from out and out advertising

Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons – http://www.bobparsons.me/index.php

Love him or hate him, Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons has staying power. He started blogging in 2004, and in 2008 he turned the blog into a bi-monthy vlog. Don’t doubt Parsons’ success: His vlogs attract 75,000 viewers, with an average of over 200 comments per episode.

Why does Parsons take the time to blog?
“The main goal is for me to have an avenue to discuss some of the important issues that will impact how the Internet is run, by whom and under whose control.”

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz — http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/
Bob Lutz jumped in to the blogging game in 2006, so there’s a ton of material showing him discuss GM’s very public financial problems. (If you want to see an executive deliver a tough message, this is the spot.) The blog does a good job of incorporating some multimedia elements, and also showcases other people in the business – it’s a blog for GM executives to talk about GM’s current and future products and services.

Giving leadership a voice
The Fast Lane blogs creates a very friendly atmosphere by pulling leaders from across the business to write posts. Also take a look at some of the other blogs GM is doing for a bigger picture look at GM’s blogging.

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There are many ways to pull off a successful CEO blog, but these just happen to be three very visible examples, and the material isn’t too technical for the average person to understand. For more on leadership blogging, see Blogging is Serious Business for Leadership.

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