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.

Comments

[Lauren Vargas]

You are spot on to define goals and objectives before deciding upon a listening/monitoring tool. Thank you for mentioning us.

Lauren Vargas
Community Manager at Radain6
@VargasL