Workforce engagement is an ongoing challenge, here and abroad. Gallup reports that 70 percent of the U.S. workforce is “unengaged.” Globally workforce engagement levels hover at 56 percent according to Aon Hewitt. In addition to the current challenges to employee engagement, such as a multi-generational workforce with widely divergent perspectives and needs, efforts to engage a global workforce must meet the challenges posed by multiple cultures, languages, and time zones, but it can be done. This is where workplace social media technology can shine.
Here are just three of many ways workplace social platforms can help your organization to engage employees, partners, and vendors worldwide:
An enterprise-wide social media platform has no time or place limitations. This means that you can push one of the most powerful drivers of engagement—employee recognition—across multiple time zones in multiple countries almost instantly.
Collaboration can take place on a global scale when social networks enable employee, teams and business partners to share comments, ideas and documents worldwide in real time.
Face-to-face communication serves a high-value role in employee engagement, but is substantially reduced with a global workforce. A workplace social platform enables leaders to communicate globally regarding goals, important updates, and other vital messages. The platform also enables employees, no matter where they are, to add their voices to the conversation.
Ultimately, a workplace social platform has the potential to create a global community of all participants who are engaged with each other and with their organization, working under the influence of commonly shared values and toward commonly shared goals.
Is a global workforce in your future?
A global workforce is today’s reality. Just look at what’s happening right now:
Many of these multinationals are already using workplace social technologies (or “workplace business technology”) to unify and empower employees worldwide. For example, Fluor Corporation uses social software to enable its 43,000 employees around the world to “more effectively communicate, collaborate and spur innovation.”
Say Lim, vice president of IT, Fluor Corporation, says that the organization’s social intranet is “transforming how we do business and creating a more connected workforce across departments, geographies and the world.”
As organizations use social technology to engage and empower their employees, they gain the competitive advantages of improved productivity and heightened innovation. These people-focused businesses are reported to generate 26 percent more revenue per employee and have 40 percent lower turnover rates.*
If your organization doesn’t have employees or partners in other countries, it’s likely that at some point you will. When that happens, engaging a global workforce will become a strategic priority. A workplace social platform will be more than an investment. It will be an asset.
*Bersin by Deloitte, “The Science of Fit: Using Psychology to Replicate High Performance,” May 2011, Research ID: 14037
Sources:
kpmg.com “Global Rewards Within Reach-Survey of Mid-Sized Multinational Companies in the Americas.”
Gallup: “State of the American Workplace Report 2013.”
“Trends in Global Engagement,” Aon Hewitt 2011
