Engagement through Facebook!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Posted by Radhika

As we were driving down, my mother suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! The brinjals are going to wither." As we have a terrace garden back in Kolkata I brushed the remark assuming it is one of the garden plants she forgot about, but that did not quite fit. So the frown on my brow remained only for her to explain thereafter that her virtual brinjal plant on Farmville was soon going to die if she did not access the internet soon. I did not know how to react..

Statistics, dated February 2009, show that Facebook has undergone a 150% increase in the number of visitors in the last one year. Facebook has the highest growth rate currently in India, followed by MySpace. Facebook did not rush in with a radical concept, one which was already established by the likes of Hi5 and Orkut but what Facebook did was Engage its users.

Facebook blurred the line between public and private lives, encouraged communication among acquaintances and friends, allowed you to share articles, videos, links and additionally threw in a thousand applications out of which some or the other would appeal to you.. in short it managed to create a one stop shop for entertainment, gossip, and awakening (of course, social in nature).

Similarly organisations must make that extra effort to engage their employees. Employees form the backbone of the company and employers need to engage them by valuing their talent, recognising their efforts and applauding their achievements.

Engagement is the measure of people's willingness and ability to give discretionary effort at work. Highly committed employees try 57% harder, perform up to 20 percentiles better and are 87% less likely to leave with low levels of commitment.

Employers must continuously provide forums internally to voice opinions and incorporate suggestions for a better work environment. The famous Sears model provides a live case study regarding the improvement in employee engagement, which led to significant increase in customer satisfaction and productivity. If an organisation learns to manage and care for their human assets well, the employees will in turn engage in forwarding the treatment to customers compelling the cycle to function consistently and smoothly.