Social Media is Driving Increased Transparency in the Workplace, According to New Data from NCHRA’s HR TechXpo and Waggl

News provided by

Helium Communications

Aug 31, 2017, 16:00 ET


San Francisco, CA and Sausalito, CA (PRWEB) August 31, 2017 -- The Northern California Human Resource Association (NCHRA), and Waggl, the most human way for organizations to crowdsource feedback, today released new data from their joint “Voice of the Workplace” pulse on the subject of social media and transparency in the workplace.

The “Voice the Workplace” pulse was sent by NCHRA to over 20,000 HR professionals using Waggl’s crowdsourced listening platform from August 10-August 25, 2017, including the attendees of the HR TechXpo at Hilton Union Square in San Francisco, CA on August 25, 2017. In this pulse, 59% of the participants responded that they agree with the following statement: “The rise of social media has made my organization more transparent.” The responses illustrated some interesting splits across various demographics including gender, industry, and size of organization. For example, among male participants, 68% felt that their organizations had become more transparent due to social media, whereas only 54% of female participants felt it was the case. Among respondents from non-profits, only 55% felt their organizations had become more transparent, in comparison with 62% from the technology industry. Perhaps most notably, 69% of participants from large enterprise organizations with 10,000 employees or more felt that their organizations had become more transparent, in contrast with 50% from organizations with 201-1,000 employees.

Participants in the “Voice of the Workplace” Pulse were also asked whether, in light of recent events at Uber and Google, their organizations have changed their views/philosophy on how employees should utilize social media. In answer to this question, only 24% of the participants said that they felt that their organizations had changed.

“Within the HR community, transparency is usually regarded as a positive attribute within the organization, because it can be used to cultivate trust,” said Greg Morton, CEO, NCHRA. “Unfortunately, we’ve seen several instances in the news recently that illustrate how that transparency can backfire if the organization has underlying cultural issues that haven’t been addressed. The results of this pulse indicate that social media is one of the driving factors in encouraging transparency, but it’s certainly not the only one. Organizations don’t appear to be making changes in direct response to specific events in which employees of well-known companies have spoken out openly on social media. Nevertheless, HR professionals do believe that fostering transparency is valuable, and essential to building trust within an organization.”

In this pulse, HR West and Waggl also posed the question, “What is the most significant potential outcome of increased transparency within an organization?” and distilled crowdsourced responses into a ranked list. The top 3 answers provided by the HR professionals who participated were:

  • “Increased trust between company leadership and its employees. Increased trust will drive credibility, accountability, performance and productivity and fiscal outcomes.”
  • “Increased transparency within the organization has the potential to build stronger unity among all levels of employees helping to improve communications and understanding.”
  • “Employees will feel more invested in the organization, and leadership will have to practice what they preach about company values. If that happens a more engaged and productive workforce will emerge.”

Waggl is designed to help organizations create a culture of innovation by creating real-time, meaningful dialogue that can be used to surface ideas, collect authentic feedback, and build consensus. Unlike traditional survey and polling platforms, Waggl engages participants by asking open-ended questions and favorite responses can be “voted up.” The platform enables fast, frequent, focused conversation on virtually any topic.

“As we’ve seen from the responses on this pulse, social media has served as a catalyst for many companies to cultivate greater transparency, but the benefits go far beyond avoiding a negative post from an employee,” said Michael Papay, Co-founder and CEO, Waggl. “Cultivating transparency can create stronger of cohesion around the goals and vision of an organization. Wider dispersion of knowledge builds a shared sense of purpose and investment that leads to increased inclusion, trust, engagement and accountability. Transparency ultimately leads to better connections between people, and can help to facilitate a more agile organization.”

For additional information, please contact Waggl and NCHRA.

About NCHRA
The Northern California HR Association, one of the nation’s largest HR associations, has been advancing organizations through human resources since 1960. Delivering nearly 200 programs annually, the association is dedicated to connecting human resources professionals with practice resources, leading California-specific training, legal and legislative developments, quality service providers, and each other—forming career-long networks and partnerships.

About Waggl
Waggl is the most human way for organizations to crowdsource feedback. Named after the dance that bees do in a hive to transmit important information very quickly, Waggl lives at the intersection of two organizational realities: Companies want an engaged workforce and employees want to know that their opinions count. Waggl goes beyond the traditional survey by offering an extremely easy way to listen to many voices at once within an organization for the purpose of making it better. Waggl’s real-time listening platform creates a transparent, authentic two-way dialogue that gives people a voice, distills insights, and unites organizations through purpose. With a highly seasoned management team and a Board including esteemed executives from Glassdoor, SuccessFactors, and Coupa, Waggl is an innovative industry leader helping companies of all sizes to succeed by building a listening culture. For more information, please visit: http://www.waggl.com/.

Rebecca West, Helium Communications, http://heliumcommunications.net, +1 415.260.6094, [email protected]