Week 4 Learning Log - Manager Tie-in and Learning Lessons

Manager Tie-in

There is no doubt that social media is going to play a major role in HR for years to come. The number of people using the medium continues to grow and the incoming workforce of the future will be the most technically adept at using this technology. This is going to be an area that I will need to work closer with HR on. Given my span of oversight professionally, I constantly am having to recruit employees. With an anticipated younger workforce coming in I will need to be even more comfortable with how social media can be of assistance. There is also the need to understand that social media impacts the way that people learn how to interact. How someone interacts on social media may not be how they should interact in a professional setting. Understanding this dynamic will help prepare my team and me on how we need to educate and guide our workforce so that they can be as successful as possible. With that comes the need to have HR clearly define what is and is not acceptable behavior within that domain, and we'll need to work together in order to work through any situations that develop.

Learning Lessons

The most important content and subject matter covered this week is the magnitude of the impact that social media has on business today, and what that may look like into the future. It has the potential to be a tremendous asset and liability simultaneously. Because of that reality, it is truly incumbent on every HR team to be as familiar as they can with current and future trends in the space, and then ensuring that their business partners are educated as well. Social media's value internally is that of being able to more effectively engage a workforce in an ongoing dialogue. This could lead to improvements in efficiency, productivity and employer-employee relations. All of those items are a benefit and argument to instituting a social media construct within a company. Externally, social media can open up many doors to different types of candidates for open positions or a way to share pieces of the company's culture. Regardless of the audience, internal or external, there are also risks of not being able to control the message once it's out in social's domain. The reality is that every company must either embrace or at least be proficient in the impact that social media can have on their operation, and make plans accordingly on how they'll engage.

Week 4 Learning Log - SHRM Connect and Feedback from SHRM Connect

SHRM Connect

https://community.shrm.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=4814d9fc-e289-4d32-bc6b-fd094b4d96f6&CommunityKey=85f521fc-ba03-4926-932f-3e17d3b3827e&tab=digestviewer&SuccessMsg=Thank+you+for+submitting+your+message.

Feedback from SHRM Connect

This week's discussion on social media prompted me to ask how other organizations are utilizing the medium. There were a number of responses and it appears that many organizations are using social media internally and externally. When a company is using social media internally, there seems to be the consistent adoption of internal blogs or wiki pages. For external use, many respondents shared that their organizations use Facebook or LinkedIn predominantly. Both are used to recruit externally, share what the organization is about and interact with their customers or interest followers. Those responding that their organization uses either of these platforms shared that they have seen the value added by their adoption.

Week 4 Learning Log - Exploration and References

Exploration

Social media has quickly become the medium of choice for organizations to communicate both with an external and internal audience. As this has become the norm, human resources departments have had to identify useful tools, investigate how they can be used and execute by adopting tools that provide a value-add to the organization. From a human resources perspective, social media usage and adoption can accomplish several valuable purposes. The value that each social media path used can provide depends on what the HR area is trying to accomplish. HR's uses of social media, to communicate and accomplish objectives, are tied to two main audiences - internal and external stakeholders. The ways that HR can utilize social media to accomplish goals with internal and external stakeholders are as follows:

Internal

- create spaces for employees to collaborate
- way to gather feedback from the workforce
- identify top internal talent
- solve organizational problems
- surface ideas that can benefit the company and workforce

External

- can connect the company with potential new employees
- share information about who the company is and what culture exists
- improve organizational productivity by connecting employees to customers
- gather intel on the competition
- establish what type of employees would be successful at the company

These are just a few of the many ways that social media has impacted the business world, and specifically how HR departments are utilizing these tools to achieve the organization's strategic goals. Social media is also a very fast moving and evolving technology and communication tool, and HR departments will need to continuously improve their understanding and adoption of them in order to remain competitive.

References

Tyagi, A. (2012). Social media: Opportunities and challenges for human resource management. International Journal of Knowledge-Based Organizations,2(2), 40-53.

• Social media as a construct are the systems and tools that allow organizations and individuals to connect and communicate digitally in various forms and fashions. The emergence of this dynamic has had a massive impact on the business communities at large, and the effects are constantly being discovered. This emergence, and the popularity of it, has presented a very unique challenge to the human resources discipline on how to operate in this new space. In this article, Tyagi explores these challenges and how HR professionals can navigate through them.

Nassiriyar, M., Sadeghzadeh, A., Haghshenas, M., & Shahbazi, R. (2015). Social networks application for human resources. American Association for Science and Technology Journal of Education,1(3), 45-51.

• How people and organizations connect and communicate has been revolutionized with the advent of social media. The challenge that its arrival has caused the business world can not be understated and companies continue to struggle with how they fit in this arena. The HR departments and leaders in the business community find themselves operating in a hornet's nest of challenges. Everything from legal liability to reputational risk are constanly in play with an organization's own participation with social media or that of their employees. This article exlpores how today's HR professionals can mitigate some of these risks and prepare themselves to react should one of the risks become realized.