Corporate HR duties were a little less hectic before social sites became a mainstay medium of communication. Now, there are dozens of major social media platforms that HR representatives need to keep tabs on to ensure employees are maintaining good conduct. Likewise, it’s a whole new window into learning about prospective new employees as a sort of “soft background check.”
Let’s explore a few of the main topics that HR should be cognizant of.
Social Media in Recruiting
Social media can be a stage to build your brand’s identity in the public eye, not only from a sales perspective but also for accessing potential hires.
Begin by posting about new or recent hires and a brief bio about their professional journey that led them to your brand. This can not only share your goings-on with your audience, but it can illustrate to potential future candidates that your brand is a wholesome place that attracts good talent.
Establishing that you care about your employees’ journeys in this way with your social media audience can later draw in future employees.
The other convenient aspect of social media is that many of them offer free hiring tools, such as LinkedIn. This can be an attractive alternative to most paid applicant tracking systems.
Instant Messaging
As far as distance communication goes, e-mail and phone calls have been long-standing favorites. But the last fifteen years has seen major instant messaging tools rise to the occasion in equipping businesses — both large and small — with faster and more agile modes of communication.
HR personnel should be wary that instant messaging tools need to be monitored just as much as email and phone calls. Due to their nature, employees may be more casual with instant messaging systems, however, HR reps should still monitor these systems as much as email since there is liability involved in the casual features it presents.
Hiring and Firing
What many at-will employees do not realize before it is too late is that the comments and speech they make outside of work on social media can be cause for their dismissal.
Defamation, slander, and overtly harmful comments about the brand an employee works for are often not tolerated, and it is perfectly reasonable to judge an employee’s longevity at a company based on their temperament outside of the workplace.
Grim as it may seem, we do forfeit certain rights when we choose to work for businesses. Although each state can have different legislation that may or may not protect the employee, most states are at-will work states. These states essentially allow workplaces to fire employees for any reason other than protected classes of discrimination.
However, as we touched on before, what an employee does or says on social media can also be evidence to a recruiter to hire them in the first place. Wholesome activity and interests displayed through a social media account can inspire a positive impression of a candidate.
Likewise, HR reps should consider researching candidates through social media to verify their character is of good quality.
However, this is a double-edged sword. Do not interpret a candidate’s absence from social media as an indication that they have something to hide. Many people aren’t keen to use social media and, therefore, shouldn’t be judged poorly by default for not being on social platforms.
Remote Obstacles with Socialization and Communication
On the one hand, social media goes a long way in connecting people who are apart. On the other hand, the remote culture associated with social media presents plenty of communication challenges. It can be difficult to serve as a substitution for in-person interaction.
Remote communication can often lead to poor interaction as there is often a loss of tone, urgency, inflection, and emotion. As little as some may care to admit, emotion is a strong drive of inspiration and motivation in the workforce, and when that component is stripped out of the equation, it can leave many workers feeling dull and neglected.
It can also cause “cliquey” behavior — in which employees only interact with a select few coworkers and may be hesitant to extend this social circle. For example, you might work in a company of fifty people and only connect with three of them each week since those three people are the only others assigned to the same project you’re on.
To some extent, remote communication takes more effort and time since writing an e-mail often takes longer than just speaking to the person. Because communication can require more of a person’s time, workers become more cautious about stirring up a conversation in that way since they typically don’t want to impose on other people’s time. It’s simpler to bond with a coworker over lunch in a break room when there’s nothing urgent.
Likewise, body language and tone can go a long way in expressing acceptance and comfort with other coworkers. When you remove that from the discussion over e-mail or an instant message, it can make all actors appear cold and rote.
This is why HR personnel should take care in equipping workers with the necessary means to imitate real-life interaction as much as possible. An effective way that companies can do this is by maximizing video-conference meetings whenever possible.
Audience Differentiation Across Platforms
It’s important to identify early on which social platforms are right for your business’s purposes. Not every social media platform is created equal to that effect. For instance, TikTok attracts many young people so it may not be the ideal place to hire for high-level job positions.
It’s probably no surprise that LinkedIn attracts more business-minded professional personalities. Instagram’s audience will often contain artistic minds with an eye for visual details.
Seek to understand the platform before placing your job description on the platform. The last thing you want is a flood of applicants that share the same undesirable traits since their part of an audience fostered on a social platform that doesn’t reflect the traits you’re searching for.
Getting Up to Speed
There’s a lot involved with digital monitoring in today’s world. HR representatives will want to get on the ball with how behavior is shifting to a digital playing field. Always account for employees’ privacy, but also be cautious that they aren’t expressing things they shouldn’t.
Keep an eye out for employees that appear distant and ask them how they can feel more involved with daily dialogues. Unifying your digital communication is a necessity to prevent recklessness and apathy in the workplace. Don’t let it slip through the cracks!
Indiana Lee is a Guest Contributor at HR Daily Advisor.
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