Successful companies understand that enabling the smooth flow of information within an organization creates a corporate culture where employees can express themselves, take ownership of the company brand, and grow.
In that kind of an environment, creativity, efficiency and productivity flourish.
The power of trusted employees
Confident and empowered employees are some of the most valuable assets that your company has. They are the trusted face of a brand, and they are often the front line of interaction with your customers and partners. Long-term employees have deep institutional knowledge of the places where they work, and they are out there representing your companies every single day.
If you can create a culture where these employees feel empowered to act as brand ambassadors for an organization, then they become a formidable force for positive marketing stories about the work that you do.
Enabling the flow of information should be a key goal of any company. When the various departments are really talking and listen to each other, understanding the mission of the organization, and building a shared set of values and references over time, then that can only make a company stronger and more resilient.
Related: Empowerment in the Workplace: Enable Your Employees
A culture of sharing
When employees are well-informed and empowered, then they begin to share their knowledge and take ownership of the messages and the image that they project. Research has shown that individual employees have social influence that is far broader and more effective than the businesses that they work for. People simply trust other people more than they trust corporate structures. So if your employees are sharing positive information about the work that you do, then you have a powerful personal marketing campaign working on your behalf.
Technology can do wonders to facilitate and manage the flow of information inside a company. By using a service like Haiilo, administrators are able to quickly source or create content, and then schedule or publish it internally via the News Feed. When employees log into the News Feed, then they quickly discover the latest company news and industry trends, and share what they think will be of interest to their social networks.
How to make sharing fun
Today’s sophisticated tech tools can make the act of sharing information fun for employees. You can ‘gamify’ the way it is done to encourage more people to get involved and exert their influece. How does that work? By allocating points for who shares the most, setting goals for widest influece and rewarding those who are the most engaged. The sophisticated analytic components of cloud-based software let you measure each person’s performance in the social realm and the value that they brought to the company’s brand over a set amount of time.
If the culture of the company is working properly, then people should rise to the challenge with a bit of friendly competition without feeling like they will be judged, or even punished, if they do not actively participate.
Communication is a two-way street
Good communication makes employees feel valued, heard and understood. As a result, it gives their work more meaning and they work harder. And when the flow of information travels both ways, then employees gain insights into management, their strategy, as well as the work of other departments and the goals of the company. That’s a valuable blend of forces which should build trust and loyalty within an organization.
At the same time, information generated by employees provides management with an invaluable window into the corporate culture of a company, and the personalities it contains. The type of content that employees create and share, and the kind of traction that it gets, will generate lots of information about the brand and the company, while giving an opportunity to showcase the earned media value and the increased return on content marketing investments.
Trust is the foundation of every single healthy relationship, and it relies heavily on an ongoing process of good communication. When you make healthy communication part of the DNA of your organization, then you are laying the foundations for a successful and fulfilling work environment.
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