Corporate Social Net SelectMinds Completes $5.5 Million First Round

Great article…I just thought I’d post something from the Conenza blog as a response…

5 Ways to Turn Former Employees into Strategic Assets During a Down Economy

By Tony Audino, Co-Founder & CEO, Conenza

Companies around the globe are dealing with challenging economic times. Corporations are being forced to make difficult decisions about their business and people with imperfect and constantly-changing information.

It’s natural during an economic downturn to scrutinize and prioritize investments. Strategic executives will make the choice to invest in initiatives that make their company more efficient, more productive, and more competitive—positioning them well for future growth. The business case for a private employee and alumni community in normal economic times is one that is extremely compelling; in an economic downturn it becomes a strategic imperative.

Here are five ways a corporate employee and alumni community can uniquely contribute to your business during an economic downturn:

1. Capitalize on highly-effective sales and marketing connections. Your former employees are influencers and decision-makers at companies around the globe. Whether they are working at clients or prospects, these are people with whom it’s smart to cultivate relationships. They are strong brand ambassadors, ready to refer your organization to co-workers and colleagues at their current companies. Re-establishing and leveraging these alumni relationships always makes business sense, but becomes especially important when markets tighten and new opportunities become scarce. Help your sales and marketing people open doors with these friendly contacts. Our clients have witnessed multi-million dollar revenue increases directly traceable to their online alumni communities.
2. Substantially reduce COBRA expenses from former employees. Across the corporate world, the red pen is out. COBRA expenses—which average $2,632 per COBRA continuant according to Ceridian—can be a substantial cash drain and add no value back to your organization.

For companies that are self-insured and experience layoffs, the cost of COBRA can be staggering. However, even fully-insured companies feel the pain as increased COBRA costs translate into rate hikes in subsequent years. According to the Employee Health Benefit Research Institute, employers and their active employees generally bear the brunt of the higher health care costs because of the high cost of COBRA participants.

Conenza’s Community Platform provides two unique ways to substantially reduce your COBRA expenses:
* The Conenza Marketplace module provides alumni with privileged access to cost-effective benefits and insurance. This alternative to COBRA coverage is a win-win solution that enables alumni to avoid the high cost of COBRA premiums and your company to reduce COBRA-related expenses.
* The Conenza Opportunities module provides a place where transitioning employees can discover comprehensive career resources, and quickly find a new job that is right for them. Your company’s ability to support their next career change creates goodwill and simultaneously reduces your outplacement costs.
3. Build your employment brand. Starting an employee and alumni community during an economic downturn sends a powerful statement regarding the value your organization places on lasting relationships with your people—both current and former employees. It creates a corporate culture that is strongly rooted in relationships and trust. When employees leave and become part of your online alumni community, they are positively reminded of and still feel a part of your culture and your company. If there was ever an important time to stay connected with your alumni, it’s now.
4. Maintain your competitive edge through an extended knowledge network. An employee and alumni community enables an organization to stay connected to key contributors and capture the valuable intellectual capital of departing employees. One of the most lasting downsides of exiting employees is the unnecessary setback of losing the knowledge and ideas they take with them. By shifting a miniscule fraction of your R&D, recruiting or marketing budget to maintaining valuable relationships in a fully-managed private online community, your company retains active access to the smarts and connections of all your people—whether they’re still with the company or not.
5. Find and place exceptional talent from both inside and outside your organization Although hiring may be limited for most organizations during a downturn, it can actually be a great time to identify internal people with the hidden skills to step up to new challenges or cost-effectively acquire top talent with hard to find skill sets who know your business and can really make an impact. A strong, vibrant employee and alumni community enables you to learn more about what your people know, identify new skills and capacity, and stay connected and aware of the career status of top alumni talent so you can rehire or bring them on as contractors when the opportunity arises. From an employee or recruit’s perspective, a company with an active extended talent community is far more of a draw than one without. In uncertain times, companies who view their people as an asset worth cultivating throughout their careers have a distinct advantage in attracting the best and the brightest.

Times like this are extremely difficult, but ripe with opportunity for strategic-thinking executives. Building and maintaining strong, mutually-rewarding relationships with both your current and former employees will help ensure your organization makes the most of its people now and in the future.