First Reference Talks

Social media = time management? (Part 1)

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

To a casual observer, it might appear that time management has fallen to the wayside at many workplaces today: employees work well beyond their scheduled hours, including while on lunch breaks, during leisure time and social events and even on vacation. But with proper scheduling, time management should prevent work from expanding beyond regular work hours—as was the case before the Internet age. Instead, in the “knowledge economy”, where the smart phone rules, scheduled work hours have become nearly meaningless.

Tags: cellphone use, facebook, hours of work, IT controls, productivity, social media, social networking, social web, time management, twitter, web 2.0
Posted in Employee Relations, Human Resources, Privacy and Security | 1 Comment »

Is social media recruiting a discrimination land mine?

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Here’s a question about an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant:

By using social networking sites—such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn—to search for and recruit employees, are employers discriminating against groups that are less likely to use those services?

Tags: canadian employment law, discrimination, employment, facebook, hiring, human rights, LinkedIn, recruiting, social, social media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Human Resources, Human Rights, Recruiting and Hiring | 3 Comments »

Social media in the workplace: Oh what to do!? (part 2)

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Some companies have applied traditional methods to the problem of social media at work: the soft approach attempts to monitor and regulate via policies; and the hard approach simply slams the door on employee access and use with a heavy hand. Neither of these works particularly well. The former will almost certainly lead to employee confusion and efforts—either intentional or not—to circumvent the policy, and the latter will likely result in discontented employees finding other ways to work around the blockade. In addition, both are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce fully; and attempts to bypass or evade controls could even lead to damage of physical or virtual IT resources.

Tags: communications, content filtering, employee conduct, facebook, IM, instant messaging, policy, social media, social networking, twitter, web 2.0
Posted in Human Resources, Privacy and Security | 3 Comments »