Haiti Relief: Company's Employees and Communities Tweet and Click Into Action; Social Media and Engaged Employees Help Get the Word Out

9 Hours. 650 employees. 156,000 dollars.

In the course of just 9 hours at the tail end of a busy week, 650 EMC employees logged onto a Red Cross donation site to do their part today. What prompted their activity TODAY?  A company email at 8:03 am (see below), followed the full engagement of many,  leveraging the speed, power and viral influence of Twitter.   The result, only 9 hours later?  One hundred and fifty-six thousand more dollars for Haiti relief, and an unknown number of proud employees, customers, company watchers, and Haiti-concerned.

While the official EMC email, which offered a compelling prompt, an easy mechanism to donate, and a company pledge to match donations came out early this morning, I got the sense of the employee response, and that of the greater community of EMC followers, by observing Twitter starting around 10am, and throughout the day.  Here are a few examples:

Note this Tweet, where @the_super_dave adds to EMC employee @storageanarachy's tweet:  "Proud to be a customer!"

 

By 11:00, Tweets on my column dedicated news at EMC were streaming in like raindrops:

Late this afternoon, the tweets were still rolling in, like this from employee @jakeroz

Here is the EMC Community Involvement email which started the ball rolling:

 

EMCers, and EMC in total, have a strong track record of jumping in to help in such situations. I'll never forget, some 18 years ago, when a man who worked on our manufacturing floor had his house burn down.  A note when out to all EMCers, and checks (on-line transactions had yet to be invented!) from employees who never met this person  started pouring in from around the country, and around the world. 

The stories of EMCers efforts in the midst of Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami, and the 9-11attacks are beyond words -- their time and love far exceeding the $3 million or so in dollars EMC and EMCers have donated in such times of need.

2009 changed the game of caring though.  Social media, paired with engaged employees and an engaged company community on Twitter and Facebook, helped give hope where there was none for Nick Glasgow and his family this past summer.  And now, it gives hope to the people of Haiti, and my personal friends the Gengels, who await word if their college-aged daughter Brittany, in Haiti for a mission, has yet to be saved.

If you haven't given a little bit of yourself or your wallet yet, please consider what you can do.

---------------- Talk Back -------------------

For the people who work at companies who discourage employee activity on social networks, consider sharing this story with them ... or talking back.  Why wouldn't a company want this type of engagement to happen? Really. I don't know.

-- Polly Pearson
http://www.pollypearson.com
@pollypearson