Loosen Up on Employee Use of Social Media at Work

via news.cnet.com

I have worked with several corporations whose fear of losing control of all communications, let alone security, has prompted them to shut down access of all social media from within the company. I can understand that. If I don’t understand something, my first inclination is to stop ‘it’ until I can make some sort of sense out of it. The question is whether or not leadership teams are just stopping it or trying to make sense of it.

While Gartner came out this fall and flat out told IT authorities that “banning access to social media is futile”, the real value is understanding how foundational social networking is to our success at work, and how social media is a critical extension of that.

“While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system,” said Carol Rozwell (shown), a VP at Gartner. That’s because organizations ARE SOCIAL SYSTEMS. Not only will employees find a way around social media barriers at work, the reactions to such barriers could lead to an opposite and equal reaction.

The fact is that we want our people communicating. We want them active within both personal and work circles, and frankly, we hope there is sufficient overlap in both of those circles to give our people balanced living while at the same time continuing to build a positive brand for the organization (building positive perception, contributing to corporate and product success, increasing talent pipelines, etc.).

Instead of banning social media in the workplace, find someone on the leadership team with social media vision and make them the champion. If you don’t have one of those, then install one, because society is not going to do a social media u-turn and abandon it. Teach employee groups how to use it, when and where to use it, and how to integrate it into work processes. Give them encouragement and parameters to help them grow your brand, champion a winning culture and harness social media to grow the enterprise. Be transparent about your fears and passionate with your vision.

We could easily see in the next few years that there are dramatic financial and people results between organizations that leverage social media among employees and those that do not. Or we may not. Either way, social media is not going away, and performance will be far better for those leadership teams that figure out how to harness its power and enable their organization.

Secretary or Sales… I can do both.

I had a great visit with an HR director this morning, who is running his department in one of the fastest growing companies in the US (according to Inc. magazine), and I asked him what his biggest Human Capital challenge is.  His answer: finding good people.  ”An example is a resume we just got that said, ‘I can be a receptionist or do sales.’”  Wow.  Since those are both in the same skill set, I think that is a golden find….

The truth is, in a time where actual talent could potentially grow scarce in the throng of people ‘just looking for a job’, your receptionists and sales people ought to share some of the same skill sets.

Good sales people are always looking for suspects and then moving them along the path to becoming a prospect, hopefully queuing them up for a close at some point.  They should be building relationships, creating networks and active in various, diverse circles in hopes of doing a little hunting and farming for future deals.

Receptionists, managers, coders, employees and contractors also ought to be doing the same thing, in relation to finding talent.  Its no secret that great leaders surround themselves with people who are more competent that they are, and companies filled with rock stars usually find the resources to deliver innovative, enthusiastic solutions to their stakeholders.  Then why don’t more organizations share that behavior (‘always looking’) when it comes to filling their own ranks with talent?  

Leading organizations in talent management should be:

1. Recruiting all the time.  Always looking.

2. Training each employee how to find and recommend talent to the organizations.

3. Keeping a full pipeline of people interested in working for the company, not just immediate job seekers, but people who want to join the culture.

4. Using marketing resources to market the workplace and organization to prospective contributors.

5. Leveraging dedicated recruiters, both internally and externally.

6. Planning and developing the succession process in order to be continually on top of needs and projections.

8. Managing their finding sources just as any other supply chain.

Just as organizations should continue their investments in marketing and advertising during a recessionary period, this may be the time to find the best people available and ready to contribute. Then, as the economy recovers, they will find themselves not only ahead of the competition, but filled with the resources to out-distance and out-pace them in market leadership.