Some interesting stats in here, one that I want to add is that a customer of ours has saved £500K ($650K) in recruitment fees by writing one blog.

In my previous company, by using social we got the sales people contributing, so selling, 2 months earlier than normal through using social.  With an average deal size of $250K, a target of $1M across 100 sales people, this made a massive difference.

At that company we also increase the efficiency of everybody by 25%.  That is getting 25% of staff for free.  Across 100,000, we got 25,000 people for free. 

Social is transformational and is transformational across the whole business; Sales, Human Resources (HR), Marketing, Customer Service etc. 

Many HR departments think that social is posting jobs on Twitter.  Well you can do that, but there is a totally holistic viewpoint.  Across the whole employee experience,  From recruitment, to supporting new starters, supporting returners, allowing current employees to do their jobs, across function and across territory, the list goes on.

Social with HR is now a strategy and not a tactic.

The mistake we see so many companies take is this one of getting employees to stuff their social profiles with corporate content.  This actually hinders companies and hinders employees.  Job seekers (as do buyers) want to see employees speaking with an authentic voice.  We were talking to a CEO of a company recently and he said "I trust my employees to speak on social".  We said, have you told them this?  He said, "well, not exactly".  We pointed out that the employee didn't speak on social.  In fact as a company that sold "social" we were amazed that they we not "social".

Like anything in life, you cannot assume.

Employee have to be empowered and empowered from the top.  But by unlocking social will strip out many inefficiencies, make the workforce happier and will strip out many costs.

But better still, if you can make new starters happier, sales people happier, maternity returnees happier, support the inclusion and diversity strategy while you cannot put a £ or a $ figure against it, it will make your business a better place.