Water cooler conversations

According to a report by Melcrum, an internal communications research and training business, less than one-third of 2,100 corporate communicators that they surveyed felt confident about using social media as part of an integrated communications plan.

Yet, 60% of respondent felt compelled to press ahead with getting started inside their organisations anyway. In the survey, the top perceived benefits for implementing social media tools are improved:

Employee engagement (71%)
Internal collaboration (59%)
Internal community development (51%)
Two-way dialogue with senior executives (42%)

This survey raises a couple of questions namely, given that social media in its widest definition are hardly new media opportunities, why haven’t internal communicators already started to implement strategies containing their use and secondly, if these same communicators are not confident in the use of these tools, how can they be confident that they will improve anything?

A Talent2 survey in Australia found that 40% of respondents got all, that’s all, of their information about the organisation they work for from ‘water cooler’ conversations. Given that organisations are concerned that sponsored use of social media tools could create an atmosphere where controlled messaging is more difficult, it’s good to see that organisations are currently controlling their message so effectively!