Answers to this question were posted on askgrapevine.com by Mike Louie, Internal Communications Programme Manager atVMware. Louie, who manages the communication of more than 13,000 global employees of the company, sees the greatest benefits of social networks for internal communication in the following aspects:
1. Help with onboarding
New employees can can easily find answers to their questions on the internal social network or directly appeal to thier new colleagues. Thanks to the profiles of individual employees, they can also get to know each other better.
2. Revealing experts and new talents
Talents you have not known yet can easily find their audience and reveal to you. Employees can follow interesting ideas of their colleagues, publish links to interesting resources, establish discussion groups, etc.
3. Linking employees over large distances
With a social network, employees can share experiences from their projects across geographical distances.
4. Greater credibility of content
Internal social network quickly become a more trustworthy source of information about the company than the traditional intranet or services for sharing company information such as SharePoint. It is updated in real time and do not require any complicated processes for updates.
5. Strengthening engagement
Employees can meet colleagues they would otherwise not meet via the social network. Especially for the youngest generation employees, this kind of communication is common and an employer leading them to the use social networks will strengthen their enthusiasm for work.
6. Improved communication with corporate leaders
Social network gives ordinary employees the opportunity to communicate with the highest managers who subsequently get an opportunity to show their human face.
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