Social Disconnect
A new survey finds that employers and employees don't see eye-to-eye on the role of social media in the workplace, a new Deloitte LLP survey suggests. For instance, 45 percent of executives said social media has a positive effect on the culture of their workplaces, while only 27 percent of employees agreed. Also, 38 percent of corporate leaders said they thought social media generated more transparency in the workplace, compared with only 17 percent of employees.
Employers Lack Social Technology Education
By Amanda McGrory
Source: Benefits Pro
Although 80 percent of employers report using social technologies, 49 percent of employers say they are not taking advantage of the full potential, and only 12 percent of employer say they have improved their daily activities, according to a recent survey by Teradata, an analytic data solutions company, and Mzinga, a provider of social intelligence solutions, along with the Center for Complexity in Business at the University of Maryland.
Social technologies are used for marketing, employee collaboration, customer service, and support and sales, and the survey finds that the top areas that affect trust and influence are customer experience, service or support; marketing or brand experience; employee collaboration and knowledge sharing; and sales.
Another 75 percent of respondents fail to measure the return on investment regarding their social technologies. Instead, most do this on a case-by-case basis. Among those not measuring ROI, 31 percent are unsure whether their vendors provide analytics, 14 percent have vendors that do not provide analytics, and 44 percent do not work with vendors for analytics.
“The survey results indicate that a wide variety of industries are interested in analytics and the power that analytics can provide them in making business decisions,” says William Rand, assistant professor and director at the Center for Complexity in Business. “However, there seems to be a lack of knowledge of how to best implement analytics and a lack of consistent support for analytics across different platforms. This indicates a strong market need for education and consistent implementation of world-class analytic systems.”
In fact, some respondents report being unaware as to what information analytics can provide, and many say they have been influential since their companies have implemented social technologies but do not know how to successfully measure their use or believe the analytics were too difficult to process.
Social Network to Monitor Staff Benefits Mood
By Julia Rampen
Source: Workplace Savings and Benefits
Yammer is launching a tool to analyze employees’ reactions to company initiatives such as benefits.
The Microsoft-owned social network for businesses has introduced technology which tracks the emotions expressed in employees' comments, allowing employers to monitor the mood of staff in different departments and locations from a central dashboard.
The tool would analyze all employees' responses in order to gauge the overall reaction - allowing HR managers to quickly view the staff response to actions such as changing health benefits.
Underpinning the tool, created by digital technology company Kanjoya, is "emotion-aware sentiment analysis" which retrieves data from Yammer groups and can distinguish between 80 different emotions.
Users can then compare the level of different emotions expressed by employees and visualize them via a word cloud.
Its influencer analysis tool may also allow companies to pinpoint the most praised and well-liked individuals.
Yammer chief product officer Jim Patterson said: "By enabling this integration, Yammer customers will be able to recognize when something has affected employees either positively or negatively - and take action."
The tool is now available for all Yammer Enterprise users.