Fishburn Hedges

04.06.2010

An interesting and bold move from Walmart this week – the company has been holding an employee conference and enabled employees to report from it live on Twitter. Follow #WMT2010 for all the details. The concert sounds like it was fun…

This step just illustrates the way in which social media platforms are breaking down the boundaries between internal and external communication. In times gone by, employee conferences were usually full of PPT presentations and motivational speeches, and would always be behind closed doors. Now, if you’ll forgive the appropriation, Walmart has blown the bloody doors off. Setting up #WMT2010 has made the internal conference an external communication tool, providing a public window on the organisation, its people and its culture. Employees attending the conference are connecting with others beyond the organisation and showing them what Walmart is all about, giving it a more human face. And this could be very useful commercially: as a prospective customer, aren’t you more likely to go to a store that you know and feel you understand more than a less engaging competitor?

Clearly, this won’t be for everyone. Walmart must be pretty confident in its culture to encourage its people to participate, and committed to take part itself (as posts from ‘Walmartkevin’, for example, demonstrate). But the move is an exciting statement of intent, and evidence of the increasing blurring of lines between internal and external audiences. Employers of all types and sizes should take note, and examine whether they have the right tools and techniques in place to serve them well in an increasingly integrated world.

 Posted by Paul Sweetman