Research conducted earlier this year by David Maxfield (author and management coach) and Mike Rognlien (Learning and Development Manager, Facebook) has revealed that social media has untapped potential in the workplace for HR practitioners, thereby negating the common preception that ”using social media at work is a waste of time.”
*Here is how you can use social media to benefits your organisation:
1 Recruitment. You can get the right talent with lesser effort and expense with the help of networking websites and job portals; organisations can post vacancies, while potential recruit can created professional profiles to be headhunted through website such as Linkedin.
2 Employer Branding. You can employe social media tools to design, conceive and execute a comprehensive employer branding campaign to establish and enhance your organisation’s brand image- internally and externally- at substantially reduced coasts. Most companies now have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that are used to engage customers by sharing news updates in order to increase the brand’s attractiveness as a ‘happy’ place to work at.
3 Corporate Social Responsibility (CRS). You can execute CRS programmes via social channels with little time lag, as the provide a platform to reach out to your organisation’s stakeholders instantly. From gathering funds to help disasters affected people to marshalling volunteers to organise charity events, social media provides a cost-effective, instantaneous and interactive platform to communicate with the general public.
4 Employee Engagement. You can ensure q motivated workforce by engaging employees through online discussion forums to keep them informed of policy changes about to take place, informed of policy changes about to take place, instead of issuing memos that are restricted to department heads. The feeling of being ‘include’ in important decisions is believed to foster employee loyalty and may even reduce turnover in the long run. Social media also offers instant feedback; employee comments on message boards often reveal problems early on, enabling you to pre-emptively manage emerging crises.
By Monica Peter. The writer is an HR Professional at a multinational company.