Royal Plaza on Scotts is currently exploring the use of Facebook as a way to attract alumni and young workers to the hotel.

Eileen Ang, human resources manager said that she came up with the idea of launching the Facebook group when she joined a HR conference last month and the advertising firm shared its use of the social networking site.

According to Ang, one of the reasons employees leave the hotel when they feel they have no prospects in the company. Thus, by staying in touch with the hotel through social networking sites, alumni would be kept abreast of new career opportunities that may come up and may reapply for jobs at the hotel.

“In HR, we sometimes lose track of people who have left. When we have a new job and we think a person is suitable for it, we then realise that their mobile number has changed. But sites like Friendster and Facebook is a good way to keep in touch with them.”

Even though Royal Plaza still recruits through the usual recruitment portals such as online job portals and placing ads in the papers, Ang said that using Facebook can also appeal to the younger recruits with a hip and fun image of the hotel instead of the “stereotypical hotel management image”.

In addition to recruiting members, the social networking site can also be used as an outlet for employee communication. Questions such as the definition of leadership have been posed on the site to garner responses from employees who are then encouraged to open up.

“At one stage, people were asking if it was a good thing to allow employees to blog. But to think from the other perspective, I think that is a way for employees to tell us what they want. And using that, it would help me develop my HR strategy,” she added.