Tuesday, April 28th - Internal Issue Mgmt
For our final week of readings, I chose to examine the study by Ewing et al. (2019) regarding internal communication and employee engagement. I found it to be fascinating since I have limited experience studying communication between members of the same organization; most studies I read are focused on how an organization communicates to outside publics. However, the important concept I took away from this article is that employee engagement is a desired state of organizations for their employees, and it can be increased by utilizing social media platforms for the purpose of facilitating internal communication. The study defines employee engagement as "employees who are connected to the values and mission of the company, feel empowered, bring energy, passion, and discretionary effort to their jobs, and serve as advocates." (p. 113). It makes sense that an employee who is not engaged would feel and possess less of these positive characteristics, and that is why it is crucial for organizations and corporations to make it a priority to harness social media as a way for employees to stay connected with each other and between departments. Whether it is choosing a platform or encouraging executives or social leaders in the organization to do so, it is a wise decision.
I would like to bring in an example from my own experience. When I started graduate school, I didn't know what I didn't know about many things: academia, the Brian Lamb school requirements for thesis track and other things, how to go about structuring a research paper, and so forth. I was able to gather information to these vast concerns through face to face communication with my mentors. However, I realized that without these mentors, I would have been very alone in my information seeking. Most of the people I am close with in the BLSC are first year Master's students in my cohort, thus, I did not and still do not have more than a few connections to more experienced graduate students in the program.
The current graduate students do have one method of social media internal communication, which is the CGSA Facebook page. However, people tend to use this for asking conference paper submission questions, putting together volunteer projects, and so on. It is not really a platform for asking basic questions because I feel as though these questions are addressed face-to-face. However, especially in the midst of the coronavirus, I think establishing a page for interactions of all sorts (and even subcategory pages) would be a useful tool for our graduate student body. Besides engendering understanding, I think it would help me to be a more engaged employee and student of the BLSC. Reading this article (Ewing et al., 2019) helped me to realize that internal communication is something relevant to my life. It is also beneficial to consider for the sake of myself and others in the midst of this pandemic.
References
Ewing, M., Men, L., & O'Neil, J. (2019). Using Social Media to Engage Employees: Insights from Internal Communication Managers. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13(2), 110-132.
I would like to bring in an example from my own experience. When I started graduate school, I didn't know what I didn't know about many things: academia, the Brian Lamb school requirements for thesis track and other things, how to go about structuring a research paper, and so forth. I was able to gather information to these vast concerns through face to face communication with my mentors. However, I realized that without these mentors, I would have been very alone in my information seeking. Most of the people I am close with in the BLSC are first year Master's students in my cohort, thus, I did not and still do not have more than a few connections to more experienced graduate students in the program.
The current graduate students do have one method of social media internal communication, which is the CGSA Facebook page. However, people tend to use this for asking conference paper submission questions, putting together volunteer projects, and so on. It is not really a platform for asking basic questions because I feel as though these questions are addressed face-to-face. However, especially in the midst of the coronavirus, I think establishing a page for interactions of all sorts (and even subcategory pages) would be a useful tool for our graduate student body. Besides engendering understanding, I think it would help me to be a more engaged employee and student of the BLSC. Reading this article (Ewing et al., 2019) helped me to realize that internal communication is something relevant to my life. It is also beneficial to consider for the sake of myself and others in the midst of this pandemic.
References
Ewing, M., Men, L., & O'Neil, J. (2019). Using Social Media to Engage Employees: Insights from Internal Communication Managers. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 13(2), 110-132.
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