Social Engagement

 

     I’ve already posted on Justmeans’ Social Media & Stakeholder Engagement conference this week.  Justmeans main focus is on sustainable business practice, and although the focus of this conference was a bit broader, this meant that the bulk of the people there were from CSR-type fields.

This meant that the debate on employee engagement was particularly multi-faceted, involving:

• Using social media to engage employees
• Using social media to engagement employees in sustainability
• Engaging employees in social media
• Engaging employees in sustainability
• Using sustainability to engage employees….

 

However, I think there’s also an opportunity for all of these different elements to link together (as indeed they did in the case study on Marks and Spencer’s Plan A, as well as Unilever’s Deo Lab / How Green am I?):

• Social media is becoming increasingly important in both employee engagement and social responsibility
• Employees need to be engaged to gain benefits from both social media and social responsibility
• Social responsibility provides an increasingly important basis for employee engagement (mojo) and enables more open, authentic conversations through social media.

 

Perhaps more organisations do need to focus on what might be called ‘social engagement’, with a particular focus on appealing to employees’ natural demand to bond.

Although the meaning of ‘social’ may be different in each of these areas, I think many issues that relate to one of these optics relate to them all.  For example, in his presentation, Bjorn Edlund ex-Shell referred to the social (responsible) competence of managers being lacking.  I think this refers to their competence in social media, and social engagement as well.

Just a thought.

 

 

See my posts on Social Advantage:

• More social media stories (from M&S, Shell, Unilev...
• Social media stories (from Virgin Media, Santander...

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social responsibility,social media,employee engagement,Justmeans

 

 

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