July 19th, 2010 — 5:23pm
After letting the previous post run happy (
Happy Employees = Best Brand Ambassadors), I received a tweet question from
@thangdynasty thrown into the mix:
| What about monetary incentives? Do you think these will taint or complement the positive effects of the rise in social currency? |
The Short Answer
The Beatles said it best. Money can’t buy you love.
That is my sole conviction. Just as the practice of paying bloggers in dollars to endorse products is a thorny and questionable issue, providing employees with monetary incentives to engage on the social web comes with considerable risks to reputations, both employer’s and employees’. The integrity of the corporate and personal brands will be questioned. Don’t forget, we are dealing with social media, everyone is ready to pounce on you at the whiff of a questionable practice or the slightest mistake (see Google search results on ‘I Hate Tiger Airways’).
Furthermore, to quote Daryl Tay:
‘Will paying get the same kind of emotions and authenticity? Will your paid post even be remembered a week from today?’
But I know you will still ask, why would employees openly and willingly talk about their employers on social media when they are not compensated for it?
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4 comments » | Management & Leadership, Social Media
July 12th, 2010 — 12:00pm
Brenda Neckvatal asked on LinkedIn Answers:
‘Can treating employees like customers increase job satisfaction?’
The Satisfied Employee
Here’s my initial response to Brenda’s question (with edits):
| It is crucial that we treat employees as ‘internal customers‘. Making that differentiation can make a lot of difference to how they perceive their jobs/roles and contribution to the company. Job satisfaction will equate to retaining of talents and knowledge assets, which is something a lot of managers are grappling with (especially in a positive economy). |
Peter Drucker said ‘management’s duty is to preserve the assets of the institution in its care’*. In that respect, all employees must be equally treated with the same care typically reserved for customers. In today’s information-producing workplaces, even more importance and care must be given to increasingly-mobile employees. Unlike the manual worker (who peddles his strength and energy), today’s information-driven employees retain their practice’s knowledge and developed skills and sought to bring them along to the next employer (and, in some cases, including knowledge of the ex-employer’s strategic and operational secrets).
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1 comment » | Branding, Management & Leadership, Social Media
That is my sole conviction. Just as the practice of paying bloggers in dollars to endorse products is a thorny and questionable issue, providing employees with monetary incentives to engage on the social web comes with considerable risks to reputations, both employer’s and employees’. The integrity of the corporate and personal brands will be questioned. Don’t forget, we are dealing with social media, everyone is ready to pounce on you at the whiff of a questionable practice or the slightest mistake (see Google search results on ‘I Hate Tiger Airways’).