Want employees to be engaged? Let them blog
SAS creates lively discussions by letting staff talk about their interests and offer ideas through self-generated writing.
But SAS communicators aren’t cranking out employee profiles every night after they put the kids to bed. They rely on 12,000 colleagues to write the stories and snap the photographs.
“How do we do these?” said Karen Lee, senior director of internal communications for the analytics company. “You won’t believe how easy they are. This is employee-generated content.”
Give your staff members a blog—or in many cases just a form to fill out—and they will generate stories that draw clicks, inspire ideas, and even save money, according to Lee and her colleague Becky Graebe, internal communications manager.
The two recently spoke at Ragan conference. Focusing on content that engages employees, they told how SAS is creating lively discussions by letting its people talk about themselves and their interests.
Anyone can blog
The approach also has the strength of building on the smarts of a tech-savvy staff. The company no longer prints employee publications, having switched its entire internal communications to digital formats.
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