Social media and employment
Social media has now grown to be a big part of our daily living routines. Whether its Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram people use these tools whether it enhances our lives in or out of the office. In the office, social media may be used to stay connected and up to date with the industry, provide a platform where people can enjoy on their downtime, build and promote businesses, engage with potential customers/clients and so much more.
In this article, we discuss how embracing social media use in a responsible way can have a significant positive impact on your business, your workplace culture, and employee/employer relationships. While there are many upsides to the use of social media, we also examine potential risks employers should be aware of.
Benefits of social media
Not only are these social media platforms beneficial for business growth and sustainability, but they also positively impact users health and mental well-being. Platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram provide us with the opportunity to maintain relationships with friends and family, as well as express our thoughts, feelings, and experiences effortlessly to the world. Giving employees access to these platforms can break up the workday providing opportunities for employees to reset and further increase their productivity.
Further, social media…
- Enables employees to make and support professional connections
- Improves employee engagement
- Enhances the recruitment process
- Strengthens workplace relationships
Enables employees to make and support professional connections
Through various social media platforms, employees have the ability to strengthen professional relationships with not only colleagues within the company, but also with people outside of the company. This enables employees to expand their social circle and build their professional network while enhancing the company’s online presence.
Social media can also be a great place to recognise employee achievements and company milestones. It’s a place to celebrate work anniversaries, new members of the team and how someone has performed great that week. This will encourage employees to engage and interact by sharing or congratulating each other. In turn, it will improve staff morale and the overall feeling of being part of a team, leading to increased retention of staff members. This inevitably facilitates a healthy, supportive workplace culture.
Improves employee engagement and the ability to promote your business
Social media is a critical component of any company’s digital marketing strategy. It’s imperative for businesses to boost their competitive edge by regularly sharing relevant and appealing content across social media platforms to reach all kinds of potential clients or customers.
With employees having personal and business media accounts they are able to foster opportunity for engagement and promotion of their business. This also increases the chances of consumers having a more personal experience with the brand or company in which they are engaging with. Stronger connections with consumers may result in potential leads, better business opportunities, and new ideas. LinkedIn is specifically geared towards these types of professional connections.
Developing an attractive brand assists in promoting an ideal workplace culture.Companies that encourage staff to share the happy environment of their workplace will effortlessly deliver a positive brand representation to a wider audience. To illustrate, if a company is having a team lunch, or supporting a charity their staff posting about it will show the interesting/positive side of a company people may not see otherwise.
However, this ideology can work two ways. Social media is only an advantage if the employer/employees promote a positive image of the business. With an unappealing image, it can be detrimental to a business and further threaten a company’s reputation.
Social media enhances the recruitment process
Hiring managers who choose to perform social media checks in the recruitment process, may be at an advantage as an individual’s social media platform can provide insight to the overall skills and personality of the candidate. However, decisions for not hiring an employee cannot be made based on a prohibited human rights ground such as family status, age, religion, or other protected characteristics which may be evident from a candidate’s social media presence. To avoid a potential human rights issues, employers who do want to conduct social media checks should have the check performed by someone other than the hiring manager. The individual who conducts the review can provide the hiring manager with any pertinent information and keep information that touches on protected grounds to themselves.
Strengthens workplace relationships
Social media allows individuals to maintain professional connections through interacting and engaging in social media posts that are workplace related. It also enhances communications between colleagues working remote, as they can stay up-to-date on news in the workplace and or other celebratory events that occur such as promotions, anniversaries, targets that have been met, or new records that have been hit.
Concerns with social media
Whether social media is something that is encouraged or not permitted in the workplace, employees need to be reminded that whatever they post on social media represents their own professional brand. Therefore, it’s important for employees to be mindful of how they are representing themselves.
Workplace conflicts should stay offline:
Any minor situations or events that occur in the workplace should be kept offline and dealt with in a personal professional manner. As enticing as it can be, employees should avoid venting about workplace aggravations or conflicts, whether they involve managers, colleagues or customers. Any negative or derogatory comments that may be seen as “harmless” can be detrimental to the company and can have potential to threaten your job security. If there are serious issues of concern in the workplace, from an employee or employer perspective those situations should be dealt in accordance with the specific workplace policy relating to filing a workplace complaint.
Privacy concerns:
Considering platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter are open to the public, employees should be even more mindful of what they post on these social networks. If an employee wants to prevent their social activities from being exposed, then they are likely best off keeping their platforms set to private where they can.
Can and employee be disciplined for off-duty social media use?
If a valid connection can be made between the employee’s personal social media usage and an evident negative impact on the workplace, the employer may be justified in disciplining the employee in question. The type of discipline implemented should be determined on a case-by-case basis as the seriousness of the employee’s post(s) can vary. This is particularly important when an employer is considering terminating an employee since an inappropriate response can result in a finding of wrongful dismissal.
Social media policies?
There is certainly no right or wrong answer if social media should be allowed in the workplace or not. However, with an appropriate policy in place, it can prove to be more beneficial than one may think.
Clear social media policies provide expectations in relation to social media use in the workplace as well as off-duty social media use. This can be beneficial as it sets a standard for how employees should present themselves online with respects to their employment. If you choose to implement a workplace policy, it should be specific to the industry and employers should openly consider potential human rights and employee privacy issues. Further, the workplace policy must be applied consistently to all employees, and the employer should provide an opportunity for employees to be aware of the new policy for example through a seminar or training program.
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