While I was really there to see how the morning’s keynote speaker Al Gore was going to sell global warming to 11,000 HR leaders, I found a statement made by the Society of Human Resources Management board chair Robb Van Cleave to be really quite interesting. He said during his speech at their national convention on June 28th, “With the proliferation of social media your employees are becoming brand ambassadors and you, you HR leaders are becoming brand managers.”

I found this particularly interesting because during the early morning workshop I conducted, that had concluded not 15 minutes prior to Mr. Van Cleave’s speech, I covered the social nature of modern brands and the opportunity to enlist employees in the service of this new reality to build one’s brand and to increase employee engagement. I suppose it’s possible that Mr. Van Cleave plucked the quote from my presentation, but what’s more likely, given the lively conversation during my session, is that there seems to be a trend.

Social media is forcing a conversation between communications, HR and leadership about the role of employees in the definition and cultivation of their brand promise. In some organizations, this presents the opportunity to differentiate and to create stronger connections with employees and customers alike. And in others, it’s creating stricter policies around the use of online media and the dissemination of company information in the hope that social media is a passing fad.

If successful brands today are those that function as a community, where fans engage, share and personalize, how can you deliver on this expectation without promoting the use of social media?

Regardless of where you’ve come down on this issue, I’d love to hear about how you got there and what you learned about your organization in the process.

–Briana

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