YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. These social-networking giants have brought joy to the world. But for some offices, they have brought pain. Lisa Cheong reveals the fine line between productive browsing and maddening distraction, and the beneficial ways that businesses are incorporating social media platforms into everyday work.
It all started with what an employee thought was a seemingly innocuous video. Taken during the company’s dinner and dance function early in February this year, the Singapore-based employee thought that such a harmless video would be perfectly fine for sharing with other people on video-sharing website YouTube. Right?
The employee thought wrong. Apparently, the company saw fit to dismiss the employee, citing a “breach the company’s policy”. Taking his grievances to the local forum STOMP, the dismissed employee shot back, saying: “The action taken was too harsh and there was no such policy explicitly made known to all the employees beforehand.”
This soon paved the way for headlines in local news media such as “Posting office video? Think again” and “Fired for posting office video”.
In recent years, as social networking sites and content-sharing sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter emerged on the internet, bringing situations such as the one above to light. As a result, employers and fellow HR practitioners are now weighing up the implications of such sites on their workforce.
With the influx of Generation Y employees into the workplace, these tech-saavy employees are changing the way companies communicate internally. Just ask Craig Mapleston of iris Singapore. As the managing director of a marketing and advertising agency, Mapleston says he has staff who haven’t really known any other way of PC-based communication other than through social channels. “They have led the way with the rest of the workforce in adopting social media to stay in touch and share information that is relevant not just to their personal lives, but also to work,” Mapleston says, adding that 90% of his 60-strong headcount are between the ages of 22 and 35.
And as the head of a creative agency, Mapleston says it is an imperative for iris’s employees to stay on top of the changing consumer landscape and social trends. Through the use of social media, geographic barriers aren’t as limiting as they used to be – allowing a faster immediacy of sharing information in the workplace and connecting people.
“As a communications agency, we need to stay on top of what’s hot and what’s interesting consumers. This is not just funny videos on YouTube, but best practices in advertising, relevant presentations, talks and case studies.Social networks are also an enabler for them to stay up to date on the zeitgeist.” He adds that all employees have a responsibility within the agency to share what they think is relevant to their clients.
For IBMers, staying “plugged in” is easy with the wide variety of tools and platforms which the company provides its employees. Going beyond the basic Lotus offerings, the company also has BluePages, which is a resource similar to LinkedIn. As part of the organisation’s intranet, BluePages allows IBMers to find information such as contacts of colleagues or subject experts. The company also has a BlogCentral, where all the internal blogs are held and where employees can create their own blogs as well.
The worries
Social media websites raise several workplace-related concerns. Productivity, for one, is an issue which many bosses and HR practitioners fret over. As the conventional wisdom goes, if employees are spending their working hours watching YouTube videos or surfing Facebook, then surely they won’t be doing what they were paid to do.
When it comes to worrying about whether social media platforms hamper productivity, various employers have taken different steps in their responses to this concern.
There are employers, such as recruitment firm Adecco, which believes in restricting access for their employees to prevent any loss in productivity. While employees have access to video sites such as Vimeo, many employees do not have access to sites such as Facebook or YouTube.
But there are exceptions, says Jessica Chew, marketing and communications executive for Adecco Singapore and Malaysia. For example, the website restrictions are eased for recruiters who work in the advertising and creative industry, which networks online a lot. Likewise, the marketing team also has access to social media platforms, as part of their job scope involves updating content for their website’s blog as well as posting new job updates for clients.
iris, on the other hand, chooses not to provide its employees with any guidelines on social media useage. Citing trust in employees as the biggest reason, Mapleston says: “You can’t and you shouldn’t regulate or legislate how [employees] talk. If you try to introduce a type of censorship, it creates the feeling of oppression, dampens enthusiasm and ultimately creativity.” And in an industry where ideas are the lifeblood of the business, restrictions could ultimately prove to be counter-productive to the business. “In our experience, social media in the workplace is entirely positive and additive – it’s part of the culture here and to police it in any way would not only create an artificial environment but would be detrimental to business.”
As for employees at Big Blue, George Faulkner, manager of marketing and communications of IBM’s Social Computing division, says the company does provide a set of social computing guidelines for its employees. From what began as blogging guidelines in 2005, this has now evolved to include all social computing activities, says Faulkner. In addition, IBMers all sign business conduct guidelines every year which, together with the company’s values, forms the foundation of how IBMers approach everything that they do. “These guidelines are not simply to be followed during business hours, but state that they are to be followed when a self-identified IBMer is participating online at all times. There is trust at the core of these guidelines, as there is an acknowledgement of personal responsibility,” Faulkner says.
While Faulkner does admit that there is always a danger for every organisation that an employee may not be using all their work-related time in a productive manner, he says that this issue goes “far beyond the digital realm”.
“This is a cultural challenge in my opinion, a risk you face taking on any employee, not one based on the allure of some new way to avoid your assigned business tasks at hand.”
Instead, Faulkner says IBM chooses to educate and raise awareness for employees on how they can manage social computing to advance their work and productivity through new collaboration tools the company provides.
“Because we have so many successful practitioners in this space at IBM, employees can find examples very quickly of how powerful this can be when done well.”
Social networking done well
So what are some ways HR practitioners can incorporate social media platforms into their HR or company processes?
Recruitment: One of the biggest benefits companies can derive from engaging in social media platforms is in finding talent, says Chew. “One of the most lucrative platforms we are using is LinkedIn. It’s an excellent platform for identifying top talent, especially for managerial or hard-to-fill positions.”
Furthermore, Chew adds that being engaged on a social media platform can boost the employer brand as well. While corporate websites are a dime a dozen, being engaged on a social media platform can help position the company as one that is in touch with current trends.
IBM also uses Twitter to post job opportunities online as well as to create talent communities around specific areas of business. Faulkner adds that the company also uses LinkedIn for direct recruitment as well.
Keeping in touch with ex-employees: Through an organisation called The Greater IBM Connection, LinkedIn provides a space where “hundreds of thousands” of IBMers are listed and have classed themselves as past and present employees,which Faulkner says is a popular and robust platform for business communications.
Improve employee collaboration and work productivity: With IBM’s Innovation Jam, the social tool is geared towards enabling an online exchange of ideas which Faulkner says aims at solving organisational and global challenges with a “crowd-sourcing methodology”.
Since the first World Jam in 2001, these events focused on finding ways to increase collaboration, innovation, social engagement and responsiveness to change within organisations, says Faulkner, and has even invited thought leaders, executives, clients, partners and alumni to tinker with its technologies in pursuit of new ideas.
“To prepare those invited to participate, the company built an interactive website that includes sound clips, virtual guided tours, and video snippets with background information.Participants contribute to the main theme areas utilising a standard suite of Enterprise and Web 2.0 tools including wiki, chat, live conferences and other collaboration tools,” he adds.
Employee training: In a time when training budgets are becoming increasingly stretched, companies are now finding training through social media sites to be cost-effective. For instance, IBM relies on podcasts and videos which are hosted on social platforms, as well as have online communities organised for certain subjects. “We do a great deal of training through wikis, so that any number of experts on a particular subject can share information and create repositories of deep experience and knowledge for any and all to mine,” Faulkner says.
Like it or not, social media networks and platforms are impacting the way companies operate and it is now up to HR practitioners and employers to understand how they can embrace the change or resist it.
According to Mapleston, one of the biggest benefits to come from such platforms is the opening up of dialogue and the frequency of it as employees can now share information with each other “in real time”.
As for Faulkner, he says his work has improved, as he can now find answers, experts and information faster than before. “And when IBMers publish hot new materials of interest, the people I follow spread it like wildfire and I am connected with it instantly.”
At IBM, employees no longer rely on outdated modes of communication such as email, telephone or snail mail, says Faulkner. Instead, most communication is now done in the open and in places where others can add to and enhance the information – thus making it more powerful and factual.
As Chew does not deny that employee time management may crop up as an issue for employees who may spend too much time on worksites, she says it all boils down to managing employees rather than rejecting such platforms altogether.
“If managed properly, there will always be an advantage to using social media platforms than not using them,” she says.
