Why HR Benefits from Social Media
Social media’s power to transform advertising is a well-documented phenomenon—look around and you’ll see that the majority of corporations are now testing the waters. But advertising is not the only corporate division affected by Web 2.0′s innovation. What is equally astonishing, and often overlooked, is social media’s effect on what the public doesn’t see (unless it involves a sensational story about inappropriate Facebook use)—human resource management. Personneltoday’s recent feature, “Social Media: 6 functions HR can’t do without”, highlights what many professionals already know to be true: social media has promoted some amazing HR improvements.
Human resources departments are only as efficient as the technology they use. Fortunately, many HR directors have been eager early adopters of a number of Web 2.0 tools that have helped the practice of personnel management to evolve.
Take recruiting, for example. As young, recent graduates flood applicant pools, they bring with them the technologies of their generation. Facebook, blogs, Youtube: in a difficult market, new applicants are not afraid to employ any medium they feel may bring an advantage. And employers aren’t complaining; LinkedIn, the professional alternative to Facebook, is equally popular, and an estimated 80% of companies use it for recruiting purposes. Gone are the days when potential applicants were limited to the well-connected and the local; recruiters can now draw from international pools, discovering talent that may otherwise have been missed.
How about Employee Engagement? One of the easiest ways to improve productivity is to cultivate genuine interest in the work that is being done. With social media, it becomes a textbook example of killing two birds with one stone: employers have the opportunity to empower all levels of staff (blog writing and Facebook/Twitter account management have all proven useful tools for engaging employees), all the while evolving brand image by promoting transparency and customer service. Within certain guidelines, businesses can (and are often advised to) tap their employees’ creativity and enthusiasm (beyond the normal—and often surreptitious—Facebook use).
Finally, social media is one of information-sharing’s greatest allies. HR departments, by encouraging responsible employee social media use, encourages rapid dissemination of information, freeing it from the slow and creaky bureaucratic shackles it once was forced to wear. Who wouldn’t favor an office using G-chat over office memos? True, the risk of abuse lurks latently beneath the surface. But many believe that once the initial shock has passed, employees will easily adapt to using platforms like Twitter and Wikipedia to complement other research, thereby highly streamlining the research process in its entirety.
In the end, the key to using Web 2.0 to increase productivity is cultivating an office culture where employees are fully aware of both the advantages to using social media and their subsequent role in producing favorable results. It will undoubtedly take a bit of trial and error (and possibly a couple of behavior contracts) to strike the right balance, but even in these early days of corporate adoption, more seems to be much better than less.
[Courtesy of Personneltoday]
