Social Media for HR Success
By Shawnee Love
Technology is a Must
Embracing technology is a must for every organization and being tech savvy is critical for every manager, especially an HR Manager. Even if your business is conducted entirely in a bricks and mortar fashion, technology enables us to be more efficient at the day-to-day and transactional stuff which should leave us more time to engage in the value-added stuff HR leaders get paid for.
Social networking sites in particular offer HR excellent opportunities to add value to their organizations by supporting HR’s efforts in building organizational capability. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have useful applications whether recruiting, engaging and motivating, or simply trying to keep your employees.
The Purpose of Social Networking
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter create dialogue, a real two-way conversation where you are listening as well as sending out your own messages. If you are using them to converse, you are:
- building a relationship,
- establishing trust,
- engaging interest,
- collaborating, and
- learning what your audience wants.
Those results are like gold when it comes to people management.
Finding Great People
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are also great ways to build communities of people who like what your company does and/or how it does it. When an opportunity arises in your company, you might as well start looking for the new hire among people who already have a connection with your company. Another great feature of these three sites for hiring is that minimal if any job posting costs apply and depending how much effort you have put into building your social network, they could connect you with significant reach in a far more targeted fashion than some of the big name recruiting sites out there.
Keeping Great People
If you have hired people from your online community, then you have established a solid foundation for retention, because liking what your company does and/or believing in the company’s purpose seems to correlate well with a stable and resilient workforce, i.e., people who can adapt and will keep on working even when the going is tough. The reason is that when times get tough (as it often does), your employees have better reasons to stay than just a pay cheque. They are there because they like your organization, they believe in it, and they have a bond with it. You just can’t buy that kind of loyalty.
Social networking sites can also be great for gathering feedback and doing temperature checks on your employees to find out how things are going. Whether you keep an eye on the status updates for up-to-the-minute intelligence on your employees or openly ask for feedback and comments via your social media updates and tweets, consulting your employees on things that matter to them is critical to employee retention. If you are listening, you can recalibrate your strategies and make adjustments to programs long before the issues are burning.
Motivating Great People
Again, social networking sites if properly encouraged (and managed) can be a wonderful way for employees to share information amongst themselves (and learn) in just-in-time fashion. The applications for managing knowledge and mentoring are clear. It is also motivating to work in an organization you believe in and to be working with people who care about you and vice versa. I am not saying that social media heralds the death of other types of contact and communication, but rather that social media enhances relationships by fostering timely connections and conversations when you need them.
The Future
Technology is changing our workplaces and the way we work, and the pace of change is not slowing down. There are new tools, software, gadgets and processes being launched daily, and we know that technology will continue to evolve, so the time to dive in is now.
Social media is free and relatively easy to get started, so there is no reason to wait.
If I haven’t convinced you that social media is beneficial to your company and your team, consider that if you aren’t actively managing what company is saying and doing online, then you are at the mercy of whatever anyone else says. Don’t let someone else tell your story and connect with your people.
Shawnee Love is presenting at the 7th Annual Northern Symposium in Prince George October 3-4, 2011. Didn’t register for the sold out symposium? There is still space at the Symposium Networking Dinner on October 3!
Shawnee Love, Lead Consultant of Love HR and passionate promoter of HR for the 21st century may be reached at 250-801-1341 or www.lovehr.ca.
