Indian Social Media Landscape

Continuing from where we left of, we shall now see how social media platform can be used to improve the structure and efficiency of an organization.

Collaborating for Success

With help of any given platform, an organization can help teams work

      ● More effectively and efficiently

      ● Ensure teams have access to most accurate and up to date information

      ● Enable remote working

Collaborative blog from IBM

This not only leads to better work output but also builds connection. When employees feel connected to their organization, a unified purpose and each other they will be more engagement and more efficiency. Also, this reduces the scope of internal crisis as most matters are resolved via two way communication over an informal discussion.

Social Brainstorming

Social Media is also budding ground for good ideas to be sowed and germinated. Once someone proposes an idea, others can contribute to it and over a healthy discussion, the idea can take shape. Since it’s available over a platform at any given time, the constrain of a brain storming session in a closed environment and in fixed time span is eliminated, thus, giving it a feel of an open session.

A spontaneous idea that leads to a thread of comments on a Facebook group may prove to be far more productive than spending hours inside a meeting room trying to solve a problem.

Peer Recognition

Another important aspect of using social media is recognizing and highlighting achievers and the ease with which they can be rewarded. Any individual when recognized in front of his/her peers feels special. Social Media is just the right place for an individual to be recognized by his organization in front of his friends and colleagues. This builds a sense of pride and also inculcates a healthy rivalry amongst the workers.

Sharing profile of employees in internal communities can boost
confidence amongst employees

Getting Personal

Social media also gives big organizations the opportunity to show their human face. Wishing people on special occasion via a personal message can go a long way in building a lasting relationship which would prove very productive. This will hold well during a crisis. When you want that extra mile from employees, then as an organization, you also need to walk that extra mile.

Giving Voice

A social media strategy to handle employee grievances is an effective tool for online reputation management. While it may be difficult how an employee conveying their grievances in front of other employees can help, but it is better than them going public in front of external clients. Being heard is the first and almost entirely the most critical step in complaint resolution. A heard employee may equal to a satisfied employee.

Chain of communication

Social media tools such as blogs can be a great way of educating people about new products and giving detailed reviews. Bring in YouTube with video demonstrations of new products and you have an attentive employee set readily willing to understand and discuss new products. Make it innovative and your employees themselves will make it go viral thus not only giving the brand an internal viewership but also the possibility of garnering millions of eyeballs from external audience.

Sharing on internal community gives a chance for employees to interact freely irrespective to their position in the ladder

Payoffs

While it may look that bringing internal communication and HR issues on social media is a risk, with organizations having to give up on lot of control, but no policing is in fact a very good method of inculcating self control and restrain.

When people know there is someone out there to listen to them, they are less disgruntle and more constructive. They may even take the effort of using their bad experience to come up with innovative solutions to tricky problems.

This is where true employee empowerment can be achieved. This will not only help you strengthen your organization but also give you the best word of mouth publicity of them all. Employee Advocacy.

A Human Resource personal’s most important task is to hire best available talent for a position that will lead to substantial growth of an organization. Indirectly, the HR role becomes as significant as any other department. Earlier, industry contacts and expertise were the best methods to locate a perfect match. But today, things are a little different.

Changing Playgrounds

While contacts are still very important source for finding a key member for a team, recruiters are also looking to social media and finding success in spotting the right person to hire, regardless of the type of organization or industry they work in.

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

Whoever you may be, a job seeker, a professional recruiter or an organization looking to hire, and wondering if social media can help you hire, the answer is Yes! International entertainment giant TiVo reported an 11 percent increase in referrals thanks to social media tools like LinkedIn. The company has also made job opportunities “portable” so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status across major social media platforms.

Improving the Game

What is more, specific job searching tools on social media platforms have also been introduced. This is just an indication of how serious this phenomenon is. TweetaJob is a tool that uses targeting technology to tweet jobs which match the location and career interests of job seekers. This comes out of the fact that just as candidates don’t want to be contacted with irrelevant positions, organizations don’t want their openings to be overwhelmed by other offerings.

TweetaJob Tool for Twitter

Where to Play

While such tools are being developed across social media platforms, many recruiters struggle with the options of various social media platforms itself. Which platform to use is something everyone wants to know? While it is obvious that LinkedIn is the global playground of professional and an obvious choice for recruiters and job seekers, one cannot rule out the usage of other platforms. With social media, everyone has a particular platform that they are most similar with and vocal on. Someone on Twitter may well be as much the right choice even of s/he is not on LinkedIn.

(Source: http://goo.gl/xCUAo)

Going Global

Another advantage of using social media tools is their global potential. One post can reach across the globe in matter of seconds thus giving a healthy exposure to your requirement as well as your organization. This works at two levels. First, an economical way of hiring from across the globe with proper background knowledge about the candidate. Second, the talent is rechargeable and in infinite quantity if you know where to look.

Hidden Benefits

While there are benefits of recruitment through social media which are evident, there is another benefit that comes as a part of the process. Through the usage of Social Media for recruitment, organization tends to build a better relation with people. Since it’s an interactive medium, the recruiter and the candidate engage in one on one conversation thus making it more conducive to a positive result.

Get into the Gear

It may be pointed that while the hiring manager looks for the right candidate, having the right profile too is very important. A complete profile with a display picture and all the professional details on LinkedIn acts like a digital resume open for anyone looking to hire. Similarly, a good twitter interaction can help in showing your charming personality to potential recruiters.

Complete Profile on LinkedIn

Conclusion

While it can be said that in no ways, Social Media Recruitment can be the only method of recruitment in an organization, but it can surely be one of the most viable method to contact people who can fit in to the company. In a survey conducted by us, we found that 48% of the respondents have been contacted for jobs via different social media platforms. Of these, almost all had an offer made to them via LinkedIn and few of them even had offers through Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook Poll (above) LinkedIn Poll (Below)

Thus, it is safe to say that although Social Media recruitment is yet not mainstream process, it is surely gaining popularity. And no one platform can cover all the possibilities that you can avail of.

Now that you have read part 1 and part 2 of ‘Who is afraid of social media’, hope you enjoy the last and final part of the series as much as the earlier ones.

• ‘We don’t know if our workforce will be excited about social media’

A very valid concern. Sometime employees might just not be ready to embrace social media and its toolss. However, one needs to remember, that most of the younger workforce have already embraced social media to a large extent and the others will too, given time and encouragement.

It might make sense to start the reluctant workforce on some simple social media tools, hand hold them and provide continuous encouragement and demonstrate the value. Tough isn’t it… but who said life was easy?

Other ways to ensure participation would be to encourage top management to actively use social media and be ‘visible’ in their efforts. Develop internal ‘evangelists’ to demonstrate the benefits and spread the good word on your behalf.

In the second part of the series on – ‘Who is afraid of social media?’ – we continue to focus on the concerns that stop social media from playing a key role in internal communication.

• ‘Our culture is very different’

Yes it’s true that social media works better if the organisation has a young, tech-savvy workforce with a flat structure and a democratic and open culture. But there are enough examples across the world where conservative companies with an older workforce have met with social media success. All it needs is time, patience and consistent efforts.

It is important to recognise the company culture and customise your social media plans accordingly. You might have to tweak your plans and phase out in a manner that makes it more acceptable and easier to adopt. One needs to pay heed to the fact that even if the organisation has been traditionally conservative about communication, in the future the Digitally Advanced will form the ranks and their communication needs will be better met using social media.

I find most corporate communicators are wary of social media when it comes to Internal Communications. While they are more than happy to embrace social media otherwise; when it comes to marketing to the internal consumer, a very important constituency in any good communicator’s plan, they will not touch social media with a ten-foot barge pole.

Today, I will try to help you understand what stops most internal communicators from using social media to increase and strengthen relationships with their consumers – the employees.

In the old way of doing things, companies make use of intranets or websites as static tools. Employees can search and find, but have limited ability to participate and contribute. In the new way of doing things, things are interactive and collaborative and use social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs, collaborative research, discussion forums and wikis.