A few months ago one of my marketing colleagues was working on a project to educate our Human resources team on social media. While it is common for the sales and marketing teams to be impacted by social media, what is not known widely is that the Human resources department can use social media very effectively to fulfill certain objectives.
In a paper titled 'Transforming Healthcare through Social Media' http://www.ehealthnews.eu/publications/white-papers/2570-transforming-healthcare-through-social-media, I had discussed how many Healthcare firms including hospitals were effectively using social media for recruitment. As I researched for the paper, I realized that many functions in a hospital required specialized skills which were not available in the general job market. Now I am sure this is not confined to healthcare and as many other industries mature and skills become more specialized, recruiters would use social media to identify the right talent. A good example is LinkedIn which is used by recruiters every day to tap into professionals. Also many use Twitter as a broadcast recruitment channel.
But is that all there is to Social Media for HR professionals?
In a research done by Brikman International http://birkman.com/news/BMI_WP_SocialMedia2.pdf almost 80 % of the HR professionals polled agreed that Social Media made them more effective in their functions. Almost 70 % of them felt that their organizations didn't have a Social Media policy and that prevented them from leveraging these networks. <Pls check this>Almost 60 % had started using social media in some form or the other in the last two years. Most popular social media network was LinkedIn, followed by Facebook and Google reader. Twitter was way down in the preference list.
This survey clearly shows that there is a need for this function to get on the social media bandwagon but it is the organization that is preventing them from doing so.
Clearly organizations have to develop a social mandate and empower HR to leverage these networks.
These are some areas that come to my mind when it comes to the sub-functions that can leverage Social Media to increase their effectiveness.
Employee Connect: One of the greatest advantages of social media is the spirit of the community and this can be greatly leveraged for connecting with employees. Most Social Media networks have communities that comprise of current and former employees. Often the discussions show the current mood of the employees and it is very important for HR as a function to monitor them and respond to them as well. Sometimes employees are reluctant to bring their issues to their management but are more open to venting it in front of peers and the community. I once had a senior level manager who reached out to me on one of the networks to ask me what others were talking about the organization. Also a prospective senior manager planning to join the organization that I worked for earlier wanted to know my opinion of the same. And again he used Twitter to reach to me. Though it was a direct message which is private but again the medium was a social network.In both cases I was wondering if the HR was monitoring the network, how important it would be to influence these decisions.
Training and Development is another key function that could be leveraged through social media. HR needs to foster a medium for collaboration and can leverage both public and private networks. Collaboration could also involve stakeholders and others not directly involved with the company.
Finally I think it is great tool for monitoring what is being said about the company both by current and former employees. This will help HR to devise their programs accordingly and also have a constructive discussion with some of the employees.. So it is time to move beyond traditional communication and activate your twitter accounts.