I will be using Google while answering the following questions.
What are they doing to communicate effectively with their employees?
Google is making fantastic use of social media within their organization. Employee blogs and similar services are encouraged to be used by employees both internally and externally. Internally these sort of things increase communication and give employees a new way to present questions and solutions. Externally the employees can use social media to communicate directly with users and customers of the products and services they create. For example if users are having a particular issue with a Google product then one of the creators of that product can answer them directly. So social media isn't just to enhance communication within an organization, but also outside of it.
What are your recommendations for how they should measure their influence?
As with many things simply surveying the users can generate a measure of influence for something such as this. However other things can be measured such as employee or project efficiency. One of the major goals of enhancing communication is to better succeed in meeting goals and deadlines. So seeing if an increase in meeting these is one measure. To measure if employees are actually making use of social media though you can stick to online measurements like posts and comments made daily/weekly/monthly/etc.
Do you have any suggestions for improvements they could make in their communications?
I can't really think of anything Google can do better from what they already are. As a major player in the technology, and specifically Internet, field it comes as no surprise that they are already efficiently using online content like social media. They already own several major services like Youtube, Blogger, and more. These tools are easily used to enhance communication. I'm sure experimental or special internal services like Wikis are also already being used by the organization.
Good :)
ReplyDeleteI am not real familiar with Google+ yet, but do you see them having employees create private groups to have communications in? Another thought was that the company could send out non urgent, non confidential information through a similar mechanism.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Google+ is a good opportunity to build a bigger community in the corporation by fostering communications.
Can't say I'm too familiar with Google+ either. I imagine though that they do create private groups for communication. Either through Google+ or a more internal system.
DeleteGoogle is an excellent case for this discussion -- good choice. I imagine Google could rely on Google+ as a collaboration tool internally, fostering relationships with clients, customers, and users.
ReplyDeleteGood post!