How effective is the “Like” button in your internal social network at work?
The tibbr team ran a report on our internal social network and discovered that on average, 11% of messages receive ‘Likes.’ The 10 most popular messages in terms of ‘likes’ contained positive announcements: praise to employees for closing deals with new customers, outstanding stories in the press and employee promotions to new positions. It may not come as a surprise to you that many of these messages happened to come from more senior people within the company. But, there’s no denying the positive influence these posts created and the recognition employees received from their co-workers who liked the post.
Could liking posts lead to higher performance in the work place? Could it motivate subject matter experts to share their expertise?
Financial incentives aren’t the only ways to motivate employees to work hard; positive recognition and feedback go a long way as well. According to the Harvard Business Review, for high-performing teams “the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1,” whereas, “low-performing teams have a ratio of .36 to 1.” Another survey, from the McKinsey Quarterly, showed that respondents view non-financial motivators—“praise from immediate managers, attention from leadership and a chance to lead projects or task forces”—as no more effective than “the three highest-rated financial incentives: cash bonuses, increased base pay, and stock or stock options.”
It might be a stretch to say simply liking posts will improve employee performance at work. It helps to have employee recognition and attention from senior management thrown into the mix as well. But, simple gestures—simply recognizing the meaningfulness of a post with a ‘Like’—provide yet another way for businesses to harness the power of a social network and help users engage more easily with relevant content.
