Taking a cue from social-network sites such as Facebook.com and
Social media also are becoming the new way to communicate with employees, especially for multiunit companies whose employees are spread across regions, states and entire countries, according to website experts and operators of major quick-service, upscale and casual-dining brands.
They say interactive sites, unlike e-mail or newsletters, can engage workers, particularly younger employees who’ve grown up using the Internet and enjoy bonding with peers online.
McDonald’s Corp. recently launched
Once on, workers can blog, join online discussions and submit videos. They can also pick a language for the site—English, Spanish or French. Up to 10,000 employees have registered so far.
“This is a way to hear from them and learn what’s on their minds in general, and to make them feel better about being a part of McDonald’s,” said McDonald’s USA’s senior director of communications, Ben Stringfellow.
“Generation Y is going to be a large part of the workforce in the next 10 to 20 years, so it’s wise to target that audience now,” said Carey Brock, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants.
This month, Kimpton launched
The site was created to tell potential job applicants about Kimpton’s culture, so employees submitted videos about their workdays and or to answer the statement: Why I Love Kimpton.
Jay Dixon, a host at the Kimpton-run Poste Brasserie in Washington, D.C., produced a short clip that is currently featured on the site. Eleven of the videos were also posted on
Blogging or online chat is not yet part of the website, although that may come later, said Alan Baer, Kimpton’s senior vice president of people and information.
“The content we got is incredible,” Baer said. “We didn’t want to type up a bunch of stuff about how great we are. It’s our employees telling each other [and visitors to the site] how great we are.”
Thomas and King, a Lexington, Ky.-based franchisee of about 90 Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar and Carino’s Italian Grill restaurants, initially set up a corporate website for employees on MySpace. The company now is expected to launch its own private social-network site this month.
“Some of our employees are a little shy on MySpace,” said Amanda Hite, the franchisee’s director of training and development. “We wanted a site that would be totally private to Thomas and King employees.”
Another benefit of the site will be to communicate directly with entry-level workers who often get overlooked in the communication route from the corporate office, she said.
Connecting with entry-level employees also has been a challenge for McDonald’s with so many crew members in North America, Stringfellow said. Historically, the company has had to depend on franchisees and restaurant managers to relay messages to crew members.
Better employee communication is often the main driver behind a company setting up a social-networking site, said Michael Rudnick, the Stamford, Conn.-based global Internet and portal leader of Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.
“When properly rolled out, social media and [Web] 2.0 tools can help companies meet their No. 1 internal communication goal: engaging employees,” Rudnick said. “Instead of simply mass e-mailing information or posting to an intranet in hopes employees will see it, social-media tools help employees actively participate in creating and sharing information.”
Creating a social network for employees is easier than it looks, said Hite, who turned for help to
“You pay, depending on how big it is or how big it gets, maybe $30 a month to maintain it,” she said. “It’s easy to set up and easy to maintain. They are not going to monitor it or provide content.”
McDonald’s
Companies that set up social-network sites need to educate employees on how to properly use them, Rudnick said.
But companies do not need to fear a loss of productivity by creating an employee social networking site, he added, noting that such concerns first emerged when the Internet debuted in the workplace in the mid-1990s.
“Employers that avoid social media altogether are missing an important opportunity and running the risk of alienating Gen X-ers and millennials,” he said. “Embracing the technology with proper planning and guidelines for its use are effective approaches to ensuring success.”
