“Yammer” On and Have a “HipChat”
Companies Using Social Media: Creating & Supporting Internal Groundswell
Li & Bernoff says that groundswell should also
be present internally, within a company. When social media networks exist
within a company then communication has a freer flow with more immediacy and
urgency.
Social media is key to a company’s success through
productivity and accomplishment, but also economic success. According to the
online magazine, Entrepeneur “…lost productivity as a result of communication
problems. A business with 100 employees, for instance, spends about 17 hours a
week clarifying communication. That translates to an annual cost of more than
$525,000.” If your company can communicate effectively and efficiently than it will show
outside your company and others will believe in your company.
Yammer & HipChat
Internal Groundswell is an important aspect of a
company. “Going with the groundswell” (by energizing, supporting, engaging,
tapping, etc.) also involves creating an internal support system using social
media. This is achieved with blogging, posting, and messaging social media
networks.
Yammer and HipChat are two services that provide
free, private social networks to companies all over the globe. The biggest
feature of these services is their messaging applications. They encourage “real
time,” rapid, free-flowing conversations amongst any level employee.
Yammer has already established itself as one of the top internal social networks. Yammer has features for managing distribution lists,
emails, employee polls and questions, and many other inner-workings of a business.
This means
coordinating and confirming on the various stages of one company objective,
ongoing task, or event, through the different levels of company branches and
employees. CEO of Yammer, David Sacks, ensures that with Yammer “employees that
feel more engaged, they feel more connected to their coworkers, they feel more
connected to the company’s mission,’ says Sacks. ‘As a result, you have less
employee turnover.”
Sacks has faith in his product and belief in the importance of encouraging and support internal groundswell (internal employee communication).
HipChat
is in an app in the same vein as Yammer, with features including public and private chat rooms
within the company, real time file sharing, and mobile compatibility. My mom actually
just started working for a startup that uses HipChat. It’s nice to see that
companies caring and maintaining the internal groundswell, and encouraging a consistent
mode of communication. And with HipChat and Yammer they both offer free service
packages, which makes the service ideal for smaller (perhaps non-profit)
organization. Again, this encourages good business practices by cultivating the
internal groundswell.
