HR
In The Age Of Social Media
Social
media hiring syncs with CEO expectations as they prefer faster hiring times,
quality hires and low cost of hiring
Like it or not, almost everybody in
the workplace is hooked on to a social network, be it LinkedIn, Twitter or
Facebook. Quite likely your own organisation may have settled for an enterprise
level social network like Yammer, Chatter or Jive. The top leadership today is
actively following the social discussion with ears to the ground on how to deal
with social media that is overrunning every section of their organisation. The
new buzzwords for CEOs and CHROs are crowd-sourcing, co-creating, collaborating
and sharing. Twitter is the latest bug to bite HR in terms of communicating
with prospective employees and monitoring employer brand. In fact, recently
SHRM India looked at the top 20 Indian HR influencers from learning and
development, social media, talent management and leadership domains and
captured their influence on Twitter.
As the transformation of economy from industrial to knowledge to innovation is well within sight, HR has a critical role to play in chartering organisations into the solid reality of social networking. As employees everywhere turn upbeat about being over-expressive on social channels, HR preps to roll out processes to harness the steady stream of messages to foster a differentiated image of the organisation.
Social media impacts business and people management in many ways. It is quite well-established as a brand and customer-oriented set of tools. The proliferation of social media as a business and HR instrument has thrown up myriad opportunities for HR and business professionals. Last year, according to a Fortune magazine study, over 80 per cent executives from Fortune 500 companies stated that social media engagement led to higher sales while 73 per cent of these companies had corporate Twitter accounts with a tweet in the last 30 days.
Progressively, social media is evolving as an innovative approach to drive internal effectiveness. A good blend of governance and strategy paired with social media tools is a sure recipe for a positive business impact both within and outside an organisation. Let us look at some opportunities unleashed as a result of embracing social media on an organisational level.
Acquiring and Engaging Talent
In most companies the acquisition of talent and its management have been the first areas to witness social media adoption. From tapping the talent pool to looking for referrals from former employees, these channels come handy in a lot of ways. Social media hiring also syncs with CEO expectations as generally they prefer faster hiring times, quality hires and low cost of hiring. On-demand searches for candidates get easier for HR teams using channels like LinkedIn and save big money on recruiting agencies and marketing spend. Experts believe that social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter can be excellent check points for attracting and screening potential employees. However, whether social media is an authoritative enough tool for hiring isn’t clear enough.
During onboarding, HR can connect employees to various interest groups (diversity, innovation, volunteerism etc.) for quick engagement using social media. Social tools also offer exciting opportunities of real-time performance feedback from internal and external clients, making way to view to dispense with the not-so effective year-end appraisal procedures. Innovative companies are actively building a strong talent branding presence on social media sites to engage passive job seekers and grow a large talent pool.
Social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikis, Blogs, Bookmarking, Podcasts, RSS, etc) offers untold collaboration opportunities to HR professionals in terms of knowledge sharing & management, peer networking, and stimulating awareness about the company, all of which complement the larger talent acquisition strategy in the long run. Today, large to mid-size organisations are embracing enterprise social networks like Yammer, which are excellent for all types of team projects and internal communication. There are aggressively simpler apps like moral.me and emooter, which can be integrated with internal social networks to gauge employee moods and happiness.
Leveraging the Multigenerational Workforce
A multigenerational workforce is a reality today and companies are able to innovate better by connecting workers and ideas in ways, which were not previously explored. However, workers of differing generations tend to view social tools and their usage quite differently and incongruently. This is why it is essential to articulate a social media policy, which allows Gen Y workers to use social media appropriately and encourages older generation workers to learn and use the new social tools. Organisations must consider the needs and unique perspectives of their multigenerational workforce in creating an effective social media strategy,
Social networks also hold tremendous value in terms of fostering cross-generational dialogues that can yield enormous benefits for a business. If properly managed, these conversations can enhance productivity and spur innovation for any business. The way to go here is developing effective communication plans that enable ongoing feedback and dialogue.
In Closing
According to the 2012 Kinsey report The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies, close to 72 per cent companies employ social technologies in one way or the other, yet not many are anywhere close to realising its full potential benefit. In fact, some of the most powerful applications of social technologies in today’s global economy are largely unexploited.
Today, a number of companies that employ social media actually struggle to integrate it successfully into their daily functioning. The larger challenge exists in creating, operating and enforcing social media usage policies. Sometimes the policies do not get established or seem to have a negative orientation (‘what not to do’) with little impact on business. The emerging policies should seek to strike the right balance between personal and workplace use while ensuring some kind of corporate oversight.
Another challenge lies not in implementing social technologies but in creating ideal conditions where employees are able to freely express their thoughts and believe their contributions are going to be valued.
At the same time, HR can and should be at the forefront of using social media to build trust, increase two-way communication, employee collaboration, and extend the employment and consumer brands. The real power of social technologies can only be harnessed by total and complete participation of employees.
Achal Khanna ,CEO, SHRM India Operations
As the transformation of economy from industrial to knowledge to innovation is well within sight, HR has a critical role to play in chartering organisations into the solid reality of social networking. As employees everywhere turn upbeat about being over-expressive on social channels, HR preps to roll out processes to harness the steady stream of messages to foster a differentiated image of the organisation.
Social media impacts business and people management in many ways. It is quite well-established as a brand and customer-oriented set of tools. The proliferation of social media as a business and HR instrument has thrown up myriad opportunities for HR and business professionals. Last year, according to a Fortune magazine study, over 80 per cent executives from Fortune 500 companies stated that social media engagement led to higher sales while 73 per cent of these companies had corporate Twitter accounts with a tweet in the last 30 days.
Progressively, social media is evolving as an innovative approach to drive internal effectiveness. A good blend of governance and strategy paired with social media tools is a sure recipe for a positive business impact both within and outside an organisation. Let us look at some opportunities unleashed as a result of embracing social media on an organisational level.
Acquiring and Engaging Talent
In most companies the acquisition of talent and its management have been the first areas to witness social media adoption. From tapping the talent pool to looking for referrals from former employees, these channels come handy in a lot of ways. Social media hiring also syncs with CEO expectations as generally they prefer faster hiring times, quality hires and low cost of hiring. On-demand searches for candidates get easier for HR teams using channels like LinkedIn and save big money on recruiting agencies and marketing spend. Experts believe that social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter can be excellent check points for attracting and screening potential employees. However, whether social media is an authoritative enough tool for hiring isn’t clear enough.
During onboarding, HR can connect employees to various interest groups (diversity, innovation, volunteerism etc.) for quick engagement using social media. Social tools also offer exciting opportunities of real-time performance feedback from internal and external clients, making way to view to dispense with the not-so effective year-end appraisal procedures. Innovative companies are actively building a strong talent branding presence on social media sites to engage passive job seekers and grow a large talent pool.
Social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikis, Blogs, Bookmarking, Podcasts, RSS, etc) offers untold collaboration opportunities to HR professionals in terms of knowledge sharing & management, peer networking, and stimulating awareness about the company, all of which complement the larger talent acquisition strategy in the long run. Today, large to mid-size organisations are embracing enterprise social networks like Yammer, which are excellent for all types of team projects and internal communication. There are aggressively simpler apps like moral.me and emooter, which can be integrated with internal social networks to gauge employee moods and happiness.
Leveraging the Multigenerational Workforce
A multigenerational workforce is a reality today and companies are able to innovate better by connecting workers and ideas in ways, which were not previously explored. However, workers of differing generations tend to view social tools and their usage quite differently and incongruently. This is why it is essential to articulate a social media policy, which allows Gen Y workers to use social media appropriately and encourages older generation workers to learn and use the new social tools. Organisations must consider the needs and unique perspectives of their multigenerational workforce in creating an effective social media strategy,
Social networks also hold tremendous value in terms of fostering cross-generational dialogues that can yield enormous benefits for a business. If properly managed, these conversations can enhance productivity and spur innovation for any business. The way to go here is developing effective communication plans that enable ongoing feedback and dialogue.
In Closing
According to the 2012 Kinsey report The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies, close to 72 per cent companies employ social technologies in one way or the other, yet not many are anywhere close to realising its full potential benefit. In fact, some of the most powerful applications of social technologies in today’s global economy are largely unexploited.
Today, a number of companies that employ social media actually struggle to integrate it successfully into their daily functioning. The larger challenge exists in creating, operating and enforcing social media usage policies. Sometimes the policies do not get established or seem to have a negative orientation (‘what not to do’) with little impact on business. The emerging policies should seek to strike the right balance between personal and workplace use while ensuring some kind of corporate oversight.
Another challenge lies not in implementing social technologies but in creating ideal conditions where employees are able to freely express their thoughts and believe their contributions are going to be valued.
At the same time, HR can and should be at the forefront of using social media to build trust, increase two-way communication, employee collaboration, and extend the employment and consumer brands. The real power of social technologies can only be harnessed by total and complete participation of employees.
Achal Khanna ,CEO, SHRM India Operations
- See more at:
http://www.businessworld.in/news/web-exclusives/hr-in-the-age-of-social-media/1024661/page-1.html#sthash.yMzAgqCg.dpuf
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