Introduction
Our research into Web 2.0 and HRM has highlighted the early stage of development of this family of social media technologies. HR professionals continue be worried about the problems that the misuse of such technologies by employees can do to brand reputations and to employee productivity through time-wasting. Yet the weight of evidence, our central argument and case study research suggests that organisations can benefit greatly through adoption of Web 2.0 in the following ways:
- connecting with the so-called V(irtual) Generation
- facilitating more effective forms of collaboration and communications among employees, and
- providing employees with the opportunity to exercise more authentic forms of ‘voice’ over issues which really matter to them.
Our poll, launched in September 2008, was aimed at finding out more about how organisations are actively using Web 2.0 for HRM and managing people. These data show that sixty-one CIPD members responded to the poll, the results of which are summarised and analysed below.
Results
The summary tables shown below describe respondents’ answers in percentages. The first point to note is that there were only sixty-one respondents to a survey that was sent to some 3000 members of the virtual trainers’ network. As a result, no claims can be made about this pattern of responses to questions on Web 2.0 being representative of either UK organisations as a whole or of those making use of Web 2.0 social media technologies.
What the low response rate may indicate, however, is either low interest in the field or the very early stage of adoption of these technologies by HRM. However, interest among HR specialists tends to focus on the potential risk of employees using social media to damage brands and the problems of time-wasting, which are important themes in the CIPD discussion forum on social networking. So, our belief is that this low response rate is more likely to indicate relatively low levels of knowledge of the positive potential of Web 2.0 among HR staff and the very early stage of adoption of Web 2.0 for HRM purposes.
Table 1: Rating of the benefits of 2.0 by CIPD members
Q1 Please rate the benefits of web 2.0/social media to your organisation.
| BENEFITS OF WEB 2.0 |
Strongly agree |
Agree |
Neither agree nor disagree |
Disagree |
Strongly disagree |
| Helps us connect with younger generations of applicants and/or employees |
23.2% |
46.4% |
23.2% |
7.1% |
0% |
| Helps us create an up-to-date brand image |
17.9% |
46.4% |
16.0% |
12.5% |
5.3% |
| Helps employees participate in decisions/issues that affect them |
14.3% |
53.6% |
16.1% |
16.1% |
0% |
| Helps us recruit more effectively by using media typically used by our prospective employees |
7.1% |
53.6% |
28.6% |
8.9% |
0% |
| Helps employees collaborate to produce and share knowledge and ideas |
30.4% |
35.7% |
21.4% |
12.5% |
0% |
| Increases the quality of decision in the organisation by facilitating the collective 'wisdom of crowds’ |
7.1% |
33.9% |
37.5% |
19.6% |
1.8% |
| Helps employees learn by using more relevant media |
5.4% |
60.7% |
21.4% |
12.5% |
0% |
| Gives employees who would not usually participate in discussions/decisions greater opportunities to do so |
7.1% |
62.5% |
17.9% |
12.5% |
0% |
| Allows individuals to express more of their opinions and ideas |
14.3% |
55.3% |
19.6% |
10.7% |
0% |
| Allows the organisation to target small groups of employees more effectively |
12.5% |
41.1% |
35.7% |
10.7% |
0% |
|
Table 2: The organisational characteristics of respondents
Q2 Would you consider the the main business of your organisation to be:
|
Yes |
No |
| A heavy user of information and communications technologies? |
70.1% |
27.9% |
| A producer of information and communications technologies/computing equipment/software? |
21.3% |
65.6% |
|
Table 3: Sector of respondents
Q3 Is your organisation:
|
Yes |
No |
| Private sector-based? |
67.2% |
16.4% |
| Public sector-based? |
32.8% |
47.6% |
|
Analysis
It can be seen from Table 1 that the sixty-one respondents agree or strongly agree with nearly all of the statements regarding the benefits of Web 2.0 we identified in our literature and case study research. These data in Table 1 show that our respondents rate the benefits of Web 2.0 in three clusters:
- giving employees greater ‘voice’ in decisions and allowing them to participate more effectively,
- connecting with the younger generation , recruiting and branding, and
- helping them share knowledge, learn and collaborate.
This pattern of responses is more or less what we would have expected to find among early adopter organisations which are sophisticated users of Web 2.0 and other online technologies. These data also indicate that there is no single cluster of benefits which dominates; respondents seem to see the benefits as an integrated package.
The only exception to our expectations concerned the question on the benefits of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ thesis, possibly reflecting respondents’ lack of knowledge, or agreement with, the ideas popularised by books such as ‘Wikinomics’, which promote the notion that the wisdom of crowds can be as accurate (or even more accurate) as experts. Similarly, there is only just a majority of respondents agreeing that Web 2.0 is being used to target small groups effectively. One of the benefits of social media is that it allows organisations to ‘talk’ easily to small segments of employees to find out about their expectations, needs and opinions. However studies on employer branding show that organisations in general are at an early stage in segmentation of their ‘internal customers’, in marked contrast to their ability and desire to segment external customers.
One of the findings we would have also predicted is that early adopting organisations would be existing heavy users or producers of information and communications technologies (ICT). Organisations either making extensive use of ICT or producing ICT have been shown to innovate more rapidly in other areas of online technologies, including e-HR and e-Learning. It does not require the need for sophisticated statistics to show that most respondents work in organisations that are heavy users of ICT. Moreover, nearly a fifth of respondents work for organisations that are ICT-producers.
Table 3, which reports on the employment sector of respondents, indicates that they are as likely to come from the public sector as the private sector in roughly the same proportions as total employment in these sectors in the UK economy. This suggests that public sector organisations are not laggards in Web 2.0 adoption, a conclusion supported by our research and our case study evidence. Indeed, a reasonable hypothesis which can be drawn from our poll is that early adoption of these technologies is driven by the needs to connect with the so-called virtual generation and the knowledge-intensity of such organisations, which includes the public sector as well as the private sector. So a reasonable summary of this poll is that the more organisations have to engage younger and more networked workers (the V-generation), and the more organisations rely on creating and using knowledge in the production of private or public goods and services, the more likely they are to innovate in the application of Web 2.0 to HRM and people management.
We would like to thank everyone who had contributed to this poll and to the discussion thread about the use of Web 2.0. Your contributions have been most helpful and informative.
If you are interested in this topic please visit http://www.cipd.co.uk/helpingpeoplelearn/Web.htm
The Web 2.0 and HR online poll and the summary results were written by Graeme Martin and Martin Reddington, two of the authors of the CIPD report on ‘Web 2.0 and Human Resource Management: Groundswell or Hype?