Businesses with high employee engagement have 28% less internal theft or shrinkage, and 21% higher productivity than those in the bottom-quartile, according to Gallup research. Higher workplace engagement also leads to lower absenteeism (37%).

Successful businesses don't just hire and retain, they turn employees into brand ambassadors by engaging them fully in their culture and values, and they find ways to track that engagement.

The good news is credit unions, which often count employees as members, will find the foundations of engagement are already there and ready to build on.

One incredibly effective way to engage employees is to “socialize” internal communications with employee-generated and business-generated content in a live, rolling feed.

A McKinsey Global Institute study estimates suggest that by using “social” technologies, companies can raise the productivity of high-skill knowledge workers – including managers and professionals – by 20-25%.

The MGI report also suggests how: “When companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35%, the time employees spend searching for company information.”

Clearly, social technologies are big time savers, but there's an arguably more important benefit, and that's one of trust. There is a risk that one-dimensional, non-interactive internal communications will be perceived at worst, as propagandist and, at best, as opaque and unapproachable. Transparency breeds trust and loyalty, among staff as well as members.

By keeping company communications interactive and social, employees have a real opportunity to engage and credit unions can garner response to company news. This might be especially valuable after a bad performing quarter when organizations could issue a rallying cry, and then measure if that message has energized or demotivated based on the social response.

Here are seven tips for integrating social media into your internal communications:

1. Encourage employee-generated content.

To truly socialize and democratize internal communications, invite employees to create their own content. The beauty of this is that your company news feed is continuously updated in real time, with posts that show off the culture you've worked so hard to cultivate. And, because this content is unfiltered, it sets a precedent of trust.

Employees could be encouraged to post everything from photos of training days and client events to snaps of their home working stations – if flexible working is one of your benefits – and team nights out.

2. Create a usage policy.

Where there's social media, there is room for misinterpretation over tone or, simply, a clash of opinion. Encourage free speech and debate, but make sure your people are clear on how your internal communications platform is to be used with some simple, readily-available guidelines. Managers should be prepared to step in and suggest a conversation is continued offline.

3. Involve the whole company.

The senior management team should dip in regularly and get involved, either by kick-starting a topic of conversation, or by commenting on employee-generated posts. Staff will feel incredibly valued when they gain recognition from the top for their enthusiasm and participation.

4. Filter discussions.

Not every discussion will be relevant or useful to every user of your internal communications platform. Use different discussion “rooms” to have focused chats for different subjects, with the right people invited to read and contribute their thoughts and ideas. If you open every discussion to every member of staff you'll disengage people quickly, because they will grow used to seeing content that doesn't apply to them and learn to click away.

By having focused discussions, different rooms can also be embedded on the relevant departmental landing pages within your organization's intranet for ease. For, example, the HR team can have a discussion channel inviting comments about HR issues that can be accessed by selected teams across the organization, and another closed room for their department only, with both being accessible through their team's main page.

5. Use storytelling.

The rules of engagement on social media also apply to internal communications. Only the very best content engages people. Posts with images or video do best, as do posts that invite comments by asking direct questions, or that make people laugh. If there's an event coming up, encourage people to use a pre-agreed upon hashtag to make the post searchable at a later date.

Stories really do bring facts to life and make them memorable, so invite your teams to explain how they secured a new client, describe their career backgrounds when they first join the team, or get frontline member services' staff to post about interesting interactions they learned from.

6. Make themes searchable.

Search functionality helps organizations measure levels of engagement through – for example – an uplift in activity around a particular event, or see which posts gain the most “likes” or comments. Content should be searchable by user, keywords and hashtags.

7. Make content accessible.

There's no point having an internal social media feed that no one ever looks at. To work successfully, social apps need to be an integrated part of your internal technology. Many organizations put their company feeds on the homepage of their intranet, which acts as a portal to all the apps and files used by their teams. This way, it can't be ignored and it becomes as accessible as email.

Nigel Davies is founder of digital workplace Claromentis. He can be reached at 0044-7771-776-454 or [email protected].