Social media in the workplace

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a big advocate of social media. I was disappointed to read a few weeks ago that ACAS released a warning to employers that employees could turn to social media sites such as Facebook to take “unofficial action” against them. HRReview reported on this and published the following poll, which with only two options could be somewhat misleading:

As an advocate of social media, this seems like needless scaremongering and it is not surprising that companies are scared of the negative effects social media could have on them and are quick to ban the use of Facebook, Twitter and other similar sites at work. Banning social media in the workplace is a negative thing to do and companies should think hard before doing so.

It seems to me that there are two main issues that lead companies to ban social media use in the workplace:

Loss of productivity and time through using social media for personal reasons during working hours
Potential adverse effect on reputation through employees misusing social media

It is understandable that employers worry about these things, but banning social media use isn’t the way to avoid these problems. After all, what will happen if a company takes social media sites away from them? Would productivity improve? It is unlikely as employees will find other websites and things to waste their time on or will use their iPhones, Blackberries and other smart phones during work time to post updates. Furthermore, banning the use of social media is likely to exaggerate and morale problems that lead to employees posting negative comments and is not doing anything to discourage them. This is a management issue and not the fault of the technology itself. The answer to these lies in getting to the root of why employees waste time at work or post negative comments about a company. Perhaps they are unmotivated, disengaged or not being given enough work to stimulate them. It is important for managers in this situation to get the the bottom of the real problem rather than looking for a quick-fix and blaming social media.

Banning the use of social media in the workplace is likely to do more harm than good for a company. Afgter all, would an employee rather work for a company that cannot trust them, or one which trusts them to do the right thing and make good use of their working time? Companies who embrace and encourage the use of Social Media will be the ones that future Generation Y talent will want to work for, as they want to be trusted with freedom and be connected 24/7. In fact 1 in 5 Gen Y people would refuse a job that banned them from personal social media access according to this article from Australia.

It is easy to advise companies not to ban the use of social media in the workplace, but how do they prevent the problems outlined above from occuring and how can they harness it to get the best out of their employees?

Give employees rules and guidelines

It is a sensible idea for companies to write a social media policy or guidelines to help employees understand what is expected of them. These should remind employees that whilst they are on social networks they are representing the company. This is for the employees benefit, as they don’t want to get into trouble through misuse of social media, but do so because they don’t know better. This website has some great examples of social media policies and guidelines for companies to follow.

Implement a training programme

Once a social media policy and/or guidelines have been implemented a company could organise some social media training workshops to help employees understand them better. This training could go as little or as far as the company wants, from covering the covered in the policy or guidelines, or getting employees to participate in looking at ways that social media can benefit themselves and the company.

Encourage informal learning and social networking

The reason I place so much personal value on social media is that it enables me to learn. I use Twitter to connect with experts in the subjects I am interested in and share ideas and experiences with like minded-people, ultimately satisfying an urge to gain knowledge and to learn in real-time. Whatever industry a company operates in there are many people on social networks that employees can learn from. There are many great resources on how to use social media for learning on the web and a great starting point is Jane Hart’s ‘Social Media in Learning’ blog.

Empower employees to find out how social media can help your business

If a business isn’t using social media yet, the chances are it is missing out and could benefit from looking into how it can help them. Who better to look into how the business can to do this than those who are already familiar with social media tools? These employees already understand how the tools work and might already have ideas about how their department or business can use them, but perhaps they haven’t had the opportunity to demonstrate this. Empowering them in this way might just lead them to do great things.

What do you think? Should social networking sites be banned in the workplace and if so, why? How would you harness social media to get the most out of your employees? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Share/Bookmark

Tagged as: business, human resources, Social Media

http://www.theexperiencefactor.com/the-x-blog Kelly Ketelboeter

Hi Jed,

What a great post and definitely timely! Many organizations are determining what access if any employees should have to social media. I love how you place responsibility for these powerful learning and collaborative tools on the manager and the organization. Employees do want access, they do want to be trusted and they can be trusted once the expectations are communicated and the organization creates accountability. It begins and ends with the leaders. I believe it's time to stop babysitting employees and begin to treat everyone like adults.

I would also add that if an employee cannot demonstrate effective decision making and reasoning skills along with time management skills then I might question why they are the team to begin with. Aren't those essential work place skills? Skills that would allow adults to effectively use social media in the workplace? Just a thought.

Bravo!
Kelly
http://www.theexperiencefactor.com/the-x-blog Kelly Ketelboeter

Hi Jed,

What a great post and definitely timely! Many organizations are determining what access if any employees should have to social media. I love how you place responsibility for these powerful learning and collaborative tools on the manager and the organization. Employees do want access, they do want to be trusted and they can be trusted once the expectations are communicated and the organization creates accountability. It begins and ends with the leaders. I believe it's time to stop babysitting employees and begin to treat everyone like adults.

I would also add that if an employee cannot demonstrate effective decision making and reasoning skills along with time management skills then I might question why they are the team to begin with. Aren't those essential work place skills? Skills that would allow adults to effectively use social media in the workplace? Just a thought.

Bravo!
Kelly
http://www.theexperiencefactor.com/the-x-blog Kelly Ketelboeter

Hi Jed,

What a great post and definitely timely! Many organizations are determining what access if any employees should have to social media. I love how you place responsibility for these powerful learning and collaborative tools on the manager and the organization. Employees do want access, they do want to be trusted and they can be trusted once the expectations are communicated and the organization creates accountability. It begins and ends with the leaders. I believe it's time to stop babysitting employees and begin to treat everyone like adults.

I would also add that if an employee cannot demonstrate effective decision making and reasoning skills along with time management skills then I might question why they are the team to begin with. Aren't those essential work place skills? Skills that would allow adults to effectively use social media in the workplace? Just a thought.

Bravo!
Kelly
http://www.theexperiencefactor.com/the-x-blog Kelly Ketelboeter

Hi Jed,

What a great post and definitely timely! Many organizations are determining what access if any employees should have to social media. I love how you place responsibility for these powerful learning and collaborative tools on the manager and the organization. Employees do want access, they do want to be trusted and they can be trusted once the expectations are communicated and the organization creates accountability. It begins and ends with the leaders. I believe it's time to stop babysitting employees and begin to treat everyone like adults.

I would also add that if an employee cannot demonstrate effective decision making and reasoning skills along with time management skills then I might question why they are the team to begin with. Aren't those essential work place skills? Skills that would allow adults to effectively use social media in the workplace? Just a thought.

Bravo!
Kelly
http://www.jedlangdon.com/ Jed Langdon

Thanks for your input Kelly, your comments always add value to posts. You are quite right, there has to be some give and take and a mutual trust between manager and employee. If a manager trusts the employee and affords them the freedom to manage and make the best use of their own time, and the employee abuses this freedom, then the manager should quite rightly consider whether the employee is right for the company.

I have recently finished reading 'Drive' by Dan Pink. Dan talks a lot about how important autonomy is to our intrinsic motivation. If an employee is lucky enough to have a manager that will afford them automation over their time then they would be foolish to abuse this in my opinion. Of course, this is assuming that the organisation and manager in question have made their expectations clear to the employee in the first place.

Thanks again for raising an interesting and valid point.
http://twitter.com/KristinaEvey Kristina Evey

Jed,

You bring to light an interesting point that has not typically been addressed. We usually look at the benefits of social media in the way that it strengthens the relationship with the customers who do business with us.

Rarely is it addressed as to how to handle social media within the organization. Your suggestions are right on. By providing guidelines and encouraging the use of social media for networking and empowerment, the staff will then become the spokespeople for the company.

Like Kelly said in her comment, if there are those staff that are using social media to vent their concerns and issues regarding the company itself or their boss, then there is likely a culture misfit for that staff member.

Keep the good content coming!

Kristina
http://www.jedlangdon.com/ Jed Langdon

Hi Kristina, thanks for your comment. I completely agree with the point yourself and Kelly make about there being a possible culture mismatch with employees who deliberately post harmful comments on social media sites. As I have eluded to in my post, it is difficult to address this unless the company has put a policy or guidelines in place so employees understand their expectations. If the companies expectations are clear and employees still make the same mistakes then I would completely agree that there probably is a culture mismatch.

Thanks again for your input Kristina, I really appreciate your input.
http://www.robertpickstone.com Robert Pickstone

Hi Jed,

You flag some good actions that companies must consider if they are to allow social media in the workplace. The two biggies for me are Policy and Training. Once this is in place then employees can then move forward at their own pace and safely understand how to learn, share, collaborate and network.

Something which I fear some companies may be forgetting to do is demonstrating to employees how social media can actually form part of the day job. There are many occasions when different platforms can assist which the completion of a daily task, and these scenarios need to be identified and explained to employees as part of their training, so that once the access has been given then people are not just sat there wandering how social media relates to their job!

I think the underlying factor which is preventing many organisations from allowing staff to use social media is trust. Employees can be trusted with a telephone, they can be trusted to write letters, they can be trusted to write emails and they can be trusted to attend meetings and events. Due to a lack of understanding and a fear of misjudged comments spreading virally, some companies are just not willing to trust their staff online. They think too much is at stake. Once the understanding is there, and the policy and training is stringent enough to satisfy those who hold high levels of responsibility, many more organisations will start to face the opportunities that are staring them in the face rather than turning the other way.

Rob
http://www.jedlangdon.com/ Jed Langdon

Great comment Rob. The more we discuss the issue of social media use in the workplace, the more I realise that it really comes down to four key points for a company:

1) Awareness/understanding
2) Setting SM strategy
3) Making expectations clear
4) Trusting employees

It is also becoming apparent to me that unless organisations make a real effort to get a grip of point #1, then the whole process is doomed. Without an understanding of what social media is and how it can impact their business, they can't demonstrate how social media tools can assist their employees with their jobs, they can't set expectations and they won't trust their employees to represent their business. My fear is that gaining a clear understanding of how social media can benefit a business seems like too much hard work and businesses might not want to allocate resources to it. Because of this it seems easier to remove social media from an employees toolkit. Until businesses decide that they are going to free up resources to better understand social media they will take the easy, hassle-free route. Would love to hear your take on this and what it takes for companies to commit to gaining a better understanding of social media Rob….

I think you are spot on with your comments about trust. It seems madness to me that employees can be trusted in so many different areas of representing a company, but not on social media channels.

Thanks for adding so much value to this conversation Rob