Social Media and the Strategic HR Executive

Social Media At Work

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the Direct Marketer’s Association.  The topic of social media and marketing is a hot topic for everyone.  I was also privileged to hear Martha Steward who told the story of her life (except for one notable two year period that was edited out!) and the story of her company’s success.  She was very high on the contribution of their on-line social media efforts to their success.  She even described a wildly popular blog site that is “written” by two of her dogs. 

 She also commented on the pending challenge of increasingly policies against accessing social media at work.  Much of her traffic comes from employees who access her content while on their job.  She correctly understands that employers will seek to block this access as they understand the threat to worker productivity.  The adage applies, “One man’s loss is another man’s victory.”  Someone will have to evolve this axiom to reflect the age of social media, “One company’s marketing is another company’s distracted employee.”

 Employers have already begun to take action to stem the loss of their employees’ attention.  A recent study by Robert Half Technologies showed that 54% of CIOs have taken steps to prohibit the use of casual social media at their companies. 

 “Using social networking sites may divert employees’ attention away from more pressing priorities, so it’s understandable that some companies limit access,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology. “For some professions, however, these sites can be leveraged as effective business tools, which may be why about one in five companies allows their use for work-related purposes.”

 This finding is consistent with my own experience in working with companies regarding their social media needs and requirements, the number one pushback is consistently three-fold:

1. Social media investments need to provide a payback to the company.
2. These technologies must be controlled to limit the distracting factor
3. Policies and procedures must prevent employees and other stakeholders from making damaging comments

The unique challenge that we face with regards to social media is the intermixing between legitimate business use and personal or social use.  Much like in our real life, the boundaries between work and play are increasingly blurred.  We all use PDAs to read e-mails while we are away from the office (something that our managers heartily endorse) and now personal interests are seeping into our day at the office (something that causes a lot more concern). 

Here are my thoughts of how to approach this tough issue:

• Expect personal responsibility.  You cannot legislate away all distractions.  Ultimately you will depend on the maturity of individuals to leverage these capabilities.  You should communicate that point loud and clear.
• Establish a framework for employees to follow.  This will vary widely by organization.  If you have a strategy that is backed up by clear policies, it will be a lot easier for personal responsibility to take hold.
• Define the benefits.  Ultimately the organization must benefit from allowing employees to engage with social media.  The benefits should be identified and everyone should know what they have to do to achieve the expected outcomes.
• Work with your IT organization.  Over and above issues of personal productivity, your IT function will have legitimate concerns about privacy, security, and bandwidth that will push them to more restrictive use of these capabilities.

 Everyone can benefit from increased access to social media.  Everyone has the potential to learn from an incredible pool of information that was previously out of reach or very expensive to acquire.  It is worth a clear investment of time and energy to avoid major concerns about distraction and productivity.

Attention and Distractions in a Social World

The whole topic of distraction has been in the news a lot of late, primarily with regards to the impact of texting on driving.  And the news isn’t good.  A recent study showed that texting while driving increases the risk of having an accident by over 23 times—making it slightly worse than driving while under the influence of alcohol.  Distractions are a big problem from whatever we do, be it driving or spending a day at the office.  Clearly, we humans are not good at doing two things at the same time.

 

And the problem has macro implications as well.  Last year I participated in an executive round table where the CEO of Burger King described the challenges of marketing in an attention deficit plagued world.  He stated that 20 years ago that the single biggest challenge to reaching customers was budget and priority.  Today, the scarcest resource that he manages is customer attention.  Individuals, especially Gen Y and Millennials, have so many options available to them that getting a tiny slice of their attention is overwhelmingly difficult.

 

Of course, customers aren’t the only ones with attention deficit problems, I was at another executive forum this spring where the topic was how best to manage millennials.  We had a small group of high performing employees who were fresh out of school who described their work styles and strategies.  While much of this was positive, the topic of scratching their “Facebook itch” during a slow time at staff meeting was a flash point for the audience.  Let’s face it, social media efforts have to deal with the whole issue of distraction to be successful.  When I talk to HR professionals and ask for common push back to their proposed social media efforts, the threat of distractions is always 1 or 2 (the other is fear of negative publicity).

 

Part of the reason why social media has the potential for being so distracting it is the way that we humans are wired to work and learn.  David Block, the author of a new book called Your Brain at Work describes the neurobiological foundations of learning.  Social interactions inherently raise our arousal levels which dramatically increase our ability to absorb information.  Add a dose of immediate positive reinforcement (have you ever observed a teenager with a huge smile driven by a quick text response?) and you have the perfect formula for the quick absorption of information. 

 

So, like many other technologies, social media is both a great opportunity and potential distracter.  Our challenge as shepherds  of our human capital at our own organizations is to harness the power of social media to increase engagement, productivity, and learning while minimizing the distracting elements.

 

No magic dust will guarantee that you will solve this dilemma, but being proactive with your social media efforts is a good start.  Here are some specific tips:

1. Define your employee engagement strategy to include social media as one of its critical components.  The tools of a social strategy should directly contribute to your overall goals of engagement.  One cannot be separated from the other
2. Use 80% carrot and 20% stick.  You will need policies that prevent employees abusing social media.  Nobody wants employees updating their Facebook during a team meeting.  But focus on the upside of social media as a means of improving collaboration and learning.
3. Define clear expectations for results from social media activities.  Time at work is ultimately about getting measurable results.  Social media provides a means of spreading participation amongst a broader range of employees.
4. Set a great example.  Your HR team can be leaders in creating a social business.  Defining activities and outcomes and then communicating results will focus everyone’s attention on what’s possible.

 

So enjoy your journey into the world of becoming a social business.  This is a great opportunity to focus your attention of exceeding your competition and engaging in common activities that will energize your business.

 

 

Building Thought Leaders in Your Company

The development of new and creative intellectual property drives growth and creates vitality.  Thought leadership has usually been seen to be the domain of a few key individuals, usually executives, product marketers or perhaps someone from engineering.  As we transition to a socially connected world, the importance of thought leadership deepens and widens.  Think of it in two dimensions:

1. Individual thought leaders will continue to be important and must be ready to take a bigger place in the spotlight.
2.  A broader employee population will require preparation to contribute to your company’s thought leadership capital.

The transition of commerce to one that is increasingly based on ideas and how they are communicated continues unabated.  And it’s not limited to traditional high technology or medical device companies.  One of the most successful consumer product companies of our era, Apple, has built a brand based on the perception of having a magic sauce of ingenuity and great ideas.  And while your company may not have aspirations to crearte the next iPod, it can surely benefit from a focus on building thought leadership and distributing it through social media channels.

Define this as a Corporate Priority

In my previous position as a Chief Marketing Officer, escalating the level of thought leadership within my group and the broader company was always one of my bigger challenges.  It was particularly frustrating because we had incredible resources and insights that would make great contributions to our company and the industry that we competed in.  The fundamental problem was that we really did not internalize the importance of developing and codifying our intellectual property that could establish ourselves as thought leaders.  To materially improve our standing as thought leaders, priorities need to be established that require our employees to contribute to the public domain.

 

HR leaders can help to build these types of priorities into performance management guidelines and procedures.  They can provide leadership to the executive team in defining objective guidelines for how thought leadership can be encouraged, managed, and ultimately measured.  Providing expertise on how employees can grow professionally while contributing to the brand and standing of their companies is a tremendous opportunity for the HR function.

Define Guidelines for Distribution of IP

A future blog post will address the broader topic of setting up policies and procedures regarding the distribution of content into the public domain.  Any company that makes a commitment to increasing their thought leadership performance will be faced with tough questions of just how much IP should be released.  The reality is that the window of opportunity can be quite small as all companies try to differentiate themselves by exposing their insights into the process and outcomes regarding their success.  The only way to succeed is to define clear guidelines for employees to follow and then encourage them to be passionate in sharing their ideas.  Your strategy should be reviewed several times a year to measure its effectiveness in light of evolving market conditions.

Create a Culture of Listening

A common theme of this blog is the importance of objective listening.  Social media fundamentally requires that we listen and interact with our audience.  The word social implies the existence of interactions. And the good news is that the world is full of content to listen to.  Basic expertise is becoming a commodity and all of us who want to be thought leaders should understand the basic insights that are already in the social environment.

 

A good place for your employees to start is to read blogs and other social media posts of experts and thought leaders in your industry.  Making insightful and challenging comments can establish your own employee (and their employer) as a thought leader.  They can build a relationship with individuals who can be quite influential in the marketplace.  Remember to move beyond a view of the world that is executive centric—some of your best ideas may well come from individuals deep within your organization who have great ideas.

Build Great Communicators

My personal experience as a manager of highly paid professionals is that the general level of writing skill in America has declined dramatically over the past 25 years.  Hopefully, the explosive growth of social media will exercise the writing muscles of the average professional and lift up the average level of communication acumen.  At least we can hope for such an outcome!

 

While most training has focused on traditional business content, developing writing skills should be a part of everyone’s career development plan.  Speaking in front of a video camera is also an acquired skill (even for those who have specialized in YouTube videos) and employees should be prepared for this type of opportunity as well.  As video blogging grows in importance, having a story to tell in front of a video camera is just as important as telling it in front of a keyboard.

 

The development of all of these skills has been haphazard and ad hoc.  It represents a huge opportunity for the proactive HR leader to provide broad value to their companies.

Develop Employees’ Personal Brand

Finally, the whole topic of personal branding has emerged as an entirely new topic to consider.  Even professional athletes have come to understand this topic.  Many of us will remember an incident early in 2009 when Lebron James refused to allow an amateur video of himself to be released because it would detract from his personal brand.  For key employees who are public leaders for your company, creating their brand is a critical process that needs to be developed.  A great book on the topic, “Crush It,” can be seen in a video review at www.readitfor.me.  The book also approaches this topic from a social perspective, so it’s a great starting point for anyone who is interested in the topic.

 

One topic that ultimately come up will be the ownership of the personal brand.  While the employee ultimately owns his/her own brand, the same might not be true of blogs and other public expressions that have been paid for by your company.  In some cases, these types of blogs can be very valuable assets and should be covered by your company’s IP ownership policy.  An ounce of proactivity will go a long ways!

The Legal Landscape of Social Recruiting

Because of the high visibility and ROI importance of social recruiting within the employee lifecycle, many HR social media efforts begin here.  So where do classic issues of bias and disparate treatment fit in.  The answer appears to be very clear and yet very murky.  So I talked to an expert on the topic, Lisa Harpe, a PhD industrial psychologist who has spent the last year researching this topic at her employer, Peopleclick, one of the leading suppliers of talent acquisition software.  Anyone who is considering the first few steps down the path of social recruiting should pay close attention to this whole topic as this area will continue to evolve quite rapidly in the years ahead.  

Where should one start their efforts?

Lisa:    Every company that is doing any type of social recruiting should make sure that they have a clear set of policies and procedures in place.  Everything else flows from that.  And without this foundation, you will be on the defensive if you have any charges against your company concerning bias and unequal treatment.  

Any other tips to someone just starting out?

Lisa:  Everyone should understand how they are using social media.  You may use it to gather information about candidates.  You may use it to solicit candidates.  You may actually use it in the hiring process.  Depending on the answer to this question, you will have to adjust your policies and procedures accordingly.  

How can you avoid using readily available information on-line that can be the major source of bias in a hiring decision?

Lisa:  I recommend that you setup a Chinese firewall between the collection of information and that those that make hiring decisions.  If one person is responsible for collecting uniform information about everyone on-line, it eliminates the appearance of bias and favoritism if the hiring manager is doing on-line research about candidates.  

What type of records should you keep?

Lisa:  This goes back to the policies and procedures that you setup in the beginning of your effort.  You should research the record-keeping requirements mandated by federal and state regulations and incorporate these requirements into your policies and procedures. And then you need to make sure that these policies and procedures are being consistently followed.   Organizations can create legal challenges by failing to consistently record information laid out in their own policies.  

What are the laws that are most relevant?

Lisa:  In the U.S., the most relevant laws are Title VII which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and sex.  The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) prohibits discrimination based on age and the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disabilities.  Federal contractors must comply with Executive Order 11246, which, similar to Title VII, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and sex. If you do international recruiting, country-specific laws may apply.  The over arching principle is that the same considerations of bias apply to social recruiting as they do to more traditional methods of recruiting and hiring.  

What about the issue of references?

Lisa:  Social websites provide a list of potential references that may provide insight into the performance of the individual prospect.  Without proper rules and training, hiring managers may take things into their own hands and use potential references in a manner which hurts candidate relations or runs afoul of the law.  You can quickly develop a wild wild west culture where anything goes.  Reference questions must be limited to fact-based questions with specific applicability to the job.   

Have legal precedents been set?

Lisa:  To my knowledge, very little legal precedence has been set because these processes are so new.  It will take some time for cases to make it through the courts providing some legal guidelines.  For the time being, taking what you know about traditional hiring and applying the same principles to social recruiting will keep you safe from most legal challenges.  

Any final “golden rule” suggestions?

Lisa:    Yes, always treat everyone the same.  If you have a well defined process for selecting candidates and reaching hiring decisions, you have already gone a long way towards keeping yourself safe from most types of challenges.  The second half of this golden rule is keeping enough documentation to show that you have always acted in a fair and consistent fashion will be very valuable as well.

Social Media and the Employee Lifecycle (part 2)

In my last blog I explained the use of the employee lifecycle as a framework for building your HR social medias strategy.  This approach helps companies move away from an exclusive focus on social recruiting and looks at the potential for larger impacts on the business that you support.   In today’s blog, I want to address the next few steps in the employee life cycle:

• Acquiring new talent (social recruiting)

• On-boarding and building engagement

Acquiring New Talent

When HR executives think about social media and how it can deliver value to their own organizations, they typically start by focusing on the recruitment process.  It is here that ROI can be most directly measured, especially if you are a company that historically has paid outside recruiters to acquire new employees.

When looking at your social recruiting landscape, you should start with the search engines and of course the big gorilla in that room is always Google.  95% of your prospects who are looking for a job will start with a search engine.  Knowing what they find when they look for your company followed by a key word such as career or job is the first step in building your strategy.

Next, you should look at the major social networking sites.  For recruiting higher level professionals, LinkedIn is a great place to start.  Your company should have a well defined site that explains your brand and contains all of the key words that someone might search for.  Another key site is Indeed which is a great place to list jobs as well as follow their forums to see what the marketplace is saying about your company.  In the same way that companies built store fronts along the new highways that were being built in the 1950s, companies today should also make sure that they have recruiting storefronts in all of the major social sites such as Facebook and mySpace.  All of these are activities that can be done in conjunction with your marketing department who may well have parallel tracks underway to use these tools for the acquisition of new customers.

One mindset that recruiters have to overcome is that recruiting is a one-way and single-link process.  Marketers understand that word of mouth advertising works so well because of a multiplier effect.  Recruiters need to create ways where the people that they touch reach out and touch an additional handful of potential targets.  A good example of this approach is Adobe who created a game targeted at students which encouraged students to recruit others to join in the fun.  Once you have made your initial investment in building a social strategy, these types of activities can build awareness at a very effective rate.

Another example of a company that has effectively used this viral approach to recruiting is UPS.  A year ago, they launched a social campaign that used a viral approach to build awareness and recruit employees all over the world.  The results of these efforts were staggering.  Their content was seen by over 1MM people which resulted in over 150,00 applications submitted.  And the process has not lost any momentum one year later—over 80,000 visitors come to the site every week.  Clearly, the use of a social media approach can deliver huge numbers at a substantial savings over traditional approaches.

Any company that begins to utilize social media for recruiting must also think about the common legal issues of bias that can result in major legal exposure.  A future blog post will include insights from an expert on this topic.  For now, suffice it to say that hiring bias issues require careful planning and execution no matter what the channel of recruiting that is being used.

On-boarding and building engagement

Up until now, this blog series has focused on employees as individuals—how to reach them and how to recruit the ones with valuable skills.   Once they turn up for work on the first day, they become part of your organization and a member of several communities that define the social environment of your company.  The challenge for HR now transitions from the individual to community—how can we engage an employee to quickly maximize their productivity and effectiveness within the organization.  While industrial psychologists have come up with ways of measuring engagement, actually effecting positive change is a challenge and an art.

Social media provides a potential tool to tackle this elusive challenge.  I emphasize the word potential because it is no more than a tool.  Successful use of social media requires several key ingredients that are often lacking in these types of efforts.  Here are some key tips:

• Be ready for the long haul—Oftentimes employee facing efforts are well planned through implementation, but lack resources and attention to be successful over time.  Using social media to build engagement over time requires an on-going investment in time and energy to provide value to your employees.

• Start with your company values—Social media provides an opportunity to communicate and demonstrate your company values.  In a social world, where your employees are front line ambassadors of your company, this is more critical than ever.

• Include everyone—Social organizations are most successful when the entire organization participates.  Getting your senior management to add their insights into the process, while difficult, will exponentially increase the chance of success.

• Keep it fun—What do all of the top YouTube videos of all time have in common?  They are funny.  You won’t see any popular videos that drone on about company policy and procedures.  Try having your employees produce a video on how their department contributes to the success of the company and you just might unleash the powerful force of employee engagement.

 

Social Media and the Employee Lifecycle (part 1)

One of the most common questions asked by HR executives relates to a framework to guide their strategic social media efforts. In my next three blog posts, will describe a couple of different frameworks that can help you layout a direction for moving ahead.   These frameworks may be used in a standalone approach or combined in any fashion to fit the needs of your business. 

 

The first approach to building a social media strategy for your HR organization is to look at the employee lifecycle and ways that social media can add value along each step of the way.  While the cycle defined below is fairly standard, I do add a step at the beginning (awareness building) and at the end (alumni programs) that are outside of the normal thinking of most traditional HR professionals.  As the power of social media grows, I am sure that the older boundaries of thinking will expand significantly.

Measure Your Reputation as an Employer

Every step in the social media world should start with careful listening. Before you start building out your social media strategy, it is critical to understand just where you stand as an employer.  Simple actions such as looking at Twitter and doing a search on your company name can be a good place to start.  Looking at blogs of key influencers will also yield great results on how your company is perceived by people in your targeted audience.

 

Of course, the challenge of larger companies demands more sophisticated monitoring tools that can provide information about.  Many companies are already using product such as Radian6 that literally monitors millions of sites on the web and finds any conversation regarding your company or your company’s products.  If your marketing function is already using one of these product, then you should work with them to find the information that you need to achieve your goals. Alternatively, work with marketing and communications to define the business case for measuring your on-line status as it exists today.  Your social media strategy will build on what you learn.

Awareness Building

Historically, brand and awareness building has been the focus of the marketing department, not HR.  However, the competitive power of social media requires that HR executives think strategically about the brand of their companies as powerful magnets that drive the front end of the recruiting cycle.  In the same way that a brand promise motivates customers to behave in a favorable way, brand will drive the best recruits to research and ultimately choose your company over your competitors. 

 

The first step is to understand how your brand promise relates to your recruiting audience.  Most marketers properly focus on customer behavior and thus may not have considered talent considerations in their strategy.  You should proactively look at how your brand can be leveraged in attracting the top talent to your company. 

 

Beyond a review of your brand, your next step should be to look at all of your social media connections to see that they are supporting your employee lifecycle strategy.  Here are some key boxes to make sure you have checked

• Have well designed and articulated company profiles on key social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

• Coach your employees on keeping their profiles up to date on LinkedIn

• Identify key social groups (professional associations, etc.) where your target audience might congregate on-line and consider ways to participate

• Look at ways to increase your on-line profile at academic institutions that represent high value recruiting grounds.

Introduction

Welcome to an exciting new blog that is dedicated to educating, encouraging, and empowering the HR executive to become social media powerhouses within their companies.  As all of you know, hr connection is an organization that is dedicated to helping HR professionals grow and excel in their roles within the organization. 

The advent of the social media movement provides tremendous opportunity for every HR organization.  Never before have the human assets of every company been moved to the forefront of your company's brand and success.  While building value has generally been limited to a select few, now many different employees will have the chance to be superstars on the social media stage. 

At least once a week, I will add content on a variety of topics that I know will be of interest to you.  These will include:

• Developing a winning social media strategy at your organization
• Defining a social media-based employee lifecycle. (Awareness building, talent acquisition, on-boarding, employee development, employee retention, and alumni services)
• Building social media infrastructure--developing the policies and procedures that everyone needs to live by
• Protecting IP--how can you reach your potential while protecting your company's valuable intellectual property.

We will also provide links to news articles and other resources that will provide your with ideas on how to be successful in your organization.  I look forward to having an ongoing dialogue with many of you about the challenges that your face and the opportunities that you have yet to find!