Social Media an Increasingly Important Tool in Keeping Employees Engaged During Tough Economic Times, Survey Finds

Current use of social networking sites such as Twitter (21 percent), Yammer (20 percent), and Facebook (18 percent) is significant, but organizations are planning to use those tools even more in the future.

Other key survey findings include:

* More than half of the respondents (52 percent) report their communication budgets have decreased and 35 percent report their communication staff has been reduced over the past 12 months
* The most common reasons cited for communication budget and staff cuts are: the economic downturn (46 percent) and organizational mandates (42 percent)
* Forty-eight percent report their employee communication strategy has stayed the same despite the economic downturn
* The frequency of ongoing employee listening reflected an "all or nothing” approach, with 62 percent of respondents who regularly engage in employee listening activities such as surveys and focus groups, and 30 percent who rarely or never engage in these methods
* Fifty-six percent of top executives are not using social media at this time, and nearly half (46 percent) of organizations are not measuring social media’s effectiveness
* Almost six in 10 respondents (59 percent) think their company has a well-established internal or employer brand