Social Media…and employment

Dr Simon Haslam

FMR Research Ltd

Our research

• Four lines of enquiry

- checking up on/vetting employees

- as a recruitment medium

- impact on organisation’s rules/policies

- as a route to community cohesion

• Over 70 publications, 12 interviews

• February to April 2011

Social media

‘Why’ – 1 It’s here!

28m UK users

13% of UK

85% UK online, of which 64% have their own profile and 43% post messages/chat

‘Why’ – 2 Game changer

‘Why’ – 3 fashion/adoption

Blogs (<2)

Wikis (2-5)

Microblogging (2-5)

Mobile social networks (2-5)

Social profiles (2-5)

Social analytics (2-5)

Crowd sourcing (2-5)

Social media 2010

‘Why’ – 4 Culture

Apollo Role Athena TaskTask

PowerZeus Dionysus Support

‘Why’ – Generations

• Matures (1945+)

• Baby boomers (1946-1964)

• Generation X (1965-1979)*• Generation Y (1980 – 2000)

‘Why’ – 5 ethics

• Who’s ethics?

- HR, research, media/journalism

• Old ethical paradigms “grey areas”

- public/private distinction

- online indefinability/validation

• ‘Contextualised Ethics’

For checking up/vetting…

• Not equal opportunities (TUC)

• Open to discrimination charges

• If ‘supplementing’ a search

- screen specifically, openly + uniformly

- neutral party does search

- do not ‘friend’

- be able to explain hire/non-hire (counsel)

- allow candidate to explain

- later in the process

Vetting… happens

• 45% of hiring professionals used social media (2009) – 29% Facebook, 26% LinkedIn, 21% Myspace, 11% blogs, 7% followed on Twitter

• Candidates disregarded

- 53% provocative/inappropriate content

- 44% posts about drinking and/or drugs

- 35% bad mouthed

- 29% poor coms skills

- 24% lied about qualifications

- 20% shared confidential info

• LinkedIn robust? (recommendations, quality, role dependent)

• Got the right person? (Facebook especially)

• Value of social media is role specific – e.g. digital new media, hospitality

Checking up on your staff

• No-one admitted to doing it

• Have a Social Media policy…

… and make it clear

For recruitment, increasingly• LinkedIn, 3m graduates, 250k sign/month

• MI6 (Facebook, 2008)

• Saatchi and Saatchi (summer scholarship 2011)

• T-mobile (Facebook, 300 grads for 42 positions)

• Royal Opera House (YouTube, non-performing roles)

• Executive recruiter (job alerts, RSS feed)

• Outsourcer (blogging, targeting linguists)

• LinkedIn Recruiter – service offer

A recruitment model

1. Source/communicate with talent online

2. ‘Talent pipelining’ – building up a community by adding people to the Careers group on LinkedIn

3. Recruitment

(mobile phone company, now with 5,000 people in the Careers group)

NB Online means Smartphone compliant

Impact on policies“… a change in attitude and confidence… from the ‘stop and block’ mentality that many businesses adopted in previous years to an appreciation that Web 2.0 is good for business and should be implemented more fully.” (2010)

• 29% of orgs have no policies (higher in private sector/SMEs, 75% of these trusted employees though 81% restricted the use of at least one Web 2.0 tool - concerns

• The new ‘Generation Standby’

Ask yourself…

Are you happy for your employees to set up a LinkedIn account without any guidance?

Is it ok for employees to mention they work for your organisation on their personal Twitter account?

What are you happy that your employees say about customers/clients on Facebook?

US Army – policy for Twitter on the frontline

Social media policy?1. Clear company philosophy

2. Definition of social media/networking

3. Disclosing oneself as an employee

4. Recommending others

5. Referring to clients and partners

6. Proprietary and confidential information

7. Terms of service

8. Copyright and legal issues

9. Productivity impact

10.Disciplinary action

Practical guidance Have a policy… but accept it might constrain Build the policy into induction/staff briefing If you have designated employees, others

have the usernames and passwords More than one person knows how to do the

uploading and backroom functions (blogs) Have a system to monitor what is said about

you online (e.g. Google Alerts, Tweetdeck) Equip the ‘monitorer’ to react/deal with Be prepared for negative/critical comments Avoid online fights

Towards company cohesion• Upscaling and working pattern trends

cause disconnection

• BT, McDonalds, O2, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Pfizer, KPMG, Westminster CC (HP

‘Watercooler’, 3,000 active, voluntary English, engineering or marketing)

• Helping HR facilitate the employee voice

• Helping HR deliver the development agenda (YouTube, forums, blogs, webinars)

• Performance – the strength of weak ties (Granovetter)

• 89% of 700 respondents have a system in place (USA data, 2010)

• Only 10% ‘successful’

• Most used – online directory (22% ‘heavy)

• 33% - no single sign-on for internal systems

• 39% - no email integration with internal social networks

• 8% (only) approach it by coordinated, multi-discipline team

• 71% of market – Microsoft SharePoint

• Many moving to Facebook but “platform is a nightmare” in this context. And ‘brand fit?’

• Be clear/serious – or its another channel for…

For us, as employees

• Understand the concept of personal branding and executive presence…

… and how social media relate to this.

• Accept the direction of flow.

• Take the next step

Executive Presence ModelProfessional

image

Social skills

Inspirational presenter

Future orientation

Corporate view

Clarity

Stories

Politically aware

Courage

Self belief

State management

Passion© DTC Ltd

Executive Presence ModelProfessional

image

Social skills

Inspirational presenter

Future orientation

Corporate view

Clarity

Stories

Politically aware

Courage

Self belief

State management

Passion© DTC Ltd

For ‘employability’ bodies• Encourage the understanding of personal

branding/presence and the role of social media in this (Facebook and employer behaviour)

• Support social media skills development – LinkedIn, Twitter

• Trial YouTube as promotional channel for candidates

• Questions – capability (technically and infrastructure) and permission?

Next steps

Reflect and digest – copies of slide deck and summary paper of case studies on www.learningorganisation.com

Employer perspective

• Develop a Social Media Policy v+1 (social media audit, third party help)

• Develop practice next step

Employee perspective

• Consider personal branding

• Take a social media next step