Social Media: Don’t Be Part of the 31 Percent

Do you trust your employees to be productive and not waste their time—the time you are paying them for, after all—by logging onto their Facebook account or checking their Twitter feed to see what is trending in the world?

Most companies do, but despite being in an era of constant connectivity to friends and co-workers, 31 percent of North American insurersdon't offer that option to their employees.

That was just one piece of valuable information I gleaned from a webinar presentation last week from Strategy Meets Action partnersKaren Furtadoand Mark Breading.

Being of a certain demographic, that number doesn't surprise me completely, although I have to believe that employees of those companies likely have a fully-charged smartphone at their side throughout the day, unless, of course, they are forced to turn them off—like school children—each morning when they come to the office.

This also might explain the reluctance among many companies over allowing workers to perform their jobs out of their home. For these employers the enemy of productivity is no longer lethargy, apparently it's distraction.

Here's another interesting number for you from the webinar: 69 percent of insurers have a social media leader in charge of the company's Facebook account and Twitter feed. That person may or may not work for the marketing director, but it is impressive to me that a job that didn't even exist in an insurance office 18 months ago is now considered a valuable post, charged with monitoring what people are saying about your company and posting positive information for all the world to see—instantly.

I believe social media still has more work to do to prove itself before it firmly establishes its worth in the corporate office, but I also believe companies can't afford to wait for that moment to present itself.

The beauty of social media is that, except for the personnel you have working on it, there is no million-dollar software involved and the ROI is not going to take 18 months to show itself.

We've reached a point in time where communication—and the tools that enable it—operates at a speed that no one ever imagined when the 21st century flipped on the calendar.

If your company is among the 31 percent that deny access to social media sites to their employees, you are not seeing the whole picture with these communication tools. Trying to control communication reminds me of the oarsmen rowing those big Viking ships. There's something to be said for keeping your head down and moving forward as long as youdon't let that head slip into the sand.