An interim summary
The increasing popularity of social media presents enormous opportunities for employers and, by implication, the HR profession. Leading UK government ministers and at least one of the principal contenders for the US presidency are making us only too aware of this with their well-publicised use of popular social networking sites. In a speech in 2007 extolling the potential of such social networking media, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, pointed out that more than 100 million people were using popular online communities such as MySpace and YouTube. Other research noted that Facebook had 42 million users worldwide and Bebo, a site aimed mainly at teenagers, had 11.6 million unique users in the UK alone. Most of these people are part of the Net or Virtual Generation (V-Gen), which has grown up using the Internet and mobile phones to communicate, play and learn. This group presents new challenges and opportunities for employers seeking to recruit from within it and to help them develop. And ‘going where the V-Gen goes’ to connect with them in a media they understand and use in their everyday lives is often singled out as the main reason why HR should become more aware of the potential of Web 2.0.
Contrary to popular conception however, it is not only the V-Gen that is ‘net savvy’. Firstly there is a group of ‘early adopter’ professionals who see enormous benefits arising from being near permanently connected to their work colleagues to collaborate on projects, or in being connected to potential employers and peers on social networking sites such as Linkedin. One of the best illustrations of such networked professionals is Meet Charlie.
Click onto this slideshow and you will meet a pastiche of a modern-day professional who works at home and in his office but manages to stay permanently connected with his global project team across time zones working collaboratively with people he has never met in real life. He does so using a range of social media, collectively known as Web 2.0, including blogs, wikis, online collaboration and learning environments, social bookmarking, RSS feeds, podcasts and videos, and social networking sites.
Secondly, a phenomenon is also emerging of comparatively ordinary employees, often with little more than a basic understanding of social media, exercising their opinions of their employers and sharing their collective knowledge online. This time, however, it is not through ‘top-down’, employer-designed attitude surveys or focus groups but through ‘bottom-up’ employee blogs, wikis, social networking sites, media sharing sites such as YouTube, instant messaging and online chatrooms. These new channels of ‘employee voice’ and learning are made possible by freely available software, which takes little time to master for the average employee, most of whom already has access to the Internet at home. The consequences are that they can offer insights into what really matters to staff and can create genuine communities of practice. The downside for HR, however, is that the results from these initiatives are much less controllable than the traditional ways of capturing employees’ views and their collective learning.
These are only some of a number of reasons why HR needs to understand and play a lead in their organisations’ uses of Web 2.0. However it seems the profession in the UK has yet to understand quite how to make the best use of these social media technologies for the benefit of their organisations and is more concerned with the potential for misuse in the workplace. For example, the CIPD 2008 Recruitment, Retention and Turnover Survey Report, indicated that the negative impact of social media on branding was the principal interest and only 20% of organisations surveyed were currently using Web 2.0 technologies for recruitment purposes. It appears from surveys like this that the challenge is controlling the new social networking sites during working time and many organisations have banned the use of such sites.
On a more positive note, more than half of respondents believed that social media networks were potentially useful for engaging job seekers. And due in no small part to articles in People Management and the popular press, HR professionals are becoming more aware of the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to:
- encourage greater collaboration and communications
- give employees and customers greater voice, especially among marginalised groups
- help knowledge sharing and management
- help people learn
- help personalise communications
Our Research Insight document is intended to introduce, not so net-savvy HR professionals to Web 2.0 and to help them understand the potential of social media for communication, collaboration and employee voice. And it will help them to make themselves and their organisation’s more effective. It does so by defining what the terms mean, discussing their essential characteristics and providing illustrations and case studies of the innovative use of social media in HR. The report takes an optimistic position, urging employers and HR professionals to take advantage of Web 2.0's potential for always open and accessible communications. However, it does not duck the issues of control and the potential impact on brands since, as indicated by surveys of HR referred to above, openness and accessibility can be seen as a glass half-full.
The Research Insight also highlights further reasons why HR may be late adopters of Web 2.0. Drawing on the Government’s Communications Network’s review of social media, it points to three other barriers. These are:
- a lack of understanding and expertise among senior managers and, consequently, a lack of higher-level support from them
- lack of data and uncertainties about the costs and benefits of various media
- the limitations placed on Web 2.0 by IT departments that didn’t want to damage the integrity of their systems.
In the Insight document we focus on two main solutions to these problems. The first is to develop a clear code of conduct and policy on Web 2.0 underpinned by training for managers highlighting opportunities and risks. This approach depends on the provision of clear guidance for the use of social media for work and personal use. Organisations can also police compliance through appropriate and well-communicated monitoring of social media.
The second solution, and one that is increasingly being used, is to take full advantage of social media but to design alternatives inside IT firewalls and those of partner organisations. This approach has now become known as Enterprise 2.0, which is exactly the approach of innovative companies in this field such as IBM and Pfizer.
However, as the report counsels, there is rarely anything we can label as ‘best practice’ in HR, especially in a field so new. So we would like you to give us your thoughts and complete the poll by participating in the online discussion, which is part of the www.cipd.co.uk/helpingpeoplelearn initiative.
Download the full Research Insight Web 2.0 and HR
Graeme Martin