Social media can be used in business for more than just recruitment
- Published on 19 Mar 2013
- Lia Marus
I, and many of our contributors, have talked quite extensively about how social media can be used in recruitment (read more here). However, we haven’t touched on the fact that social media can also be used effectively in other aspects of HR in your business.
The world of work is changing on a daily basis, which means that organisational development (OD) needs to change too – and fast – said Lydia Cillie Schmidt in her presentation, at Knowledge Resources’ OD conference, about how social media can be used effectively in OD interventions.
3 Ways that social media is revolutionising the way we do business
Lydia started off by saying that businesses in SA, and the rest of the world, are using three characteristics of social media very successfully in their businesses:
1. Gamification
It has been discovered that incorporating the mechanics of games is very effective in corporate processes, such as marketing, learning and development, operations, etc. Deloitte is one of these companies which has discovered the power of games and has integrated game-like aspects into their learning and development:
- Lydia said that in its learnership academy, Deloitte awards levels, badges and top-scores on its leaderboards to employees who pass through this academy. The employees can share their badges on Twitter, LinkedIn and their company’s intranet, which makes them proud of their achievements.
- The result of this initiative is that Deloitte and its clients have upped the engagement of their employees and that they are committed to improving at work.
2. Personal branding
Says Donna Rachelson, author of the bestselling book Branding and marketing you, to sell your product or service effectively, you must first develop your personal brand. Donna gave the example that people won’t use a financial advisor who is broke all the time. They will use the wealthy financial advisor because they know that if he can manage his own money, he’ll manage their money well too.
Lydia predicts that companies will follow PricewaterhouseCoopers’ lead by holding an annual personal branding week. During this week, the company holds a series of training exercises that help train prospective new hires to build their personal brands and increase their marketability.
3. Your Klout score will become very significant
According to Salty Waffle, your Klout scores measure how influential you are online.
Lydia predicts that in the next year, your Klout score will find a prominent place on your CV and LinkedIn profile, and may even help you get your next promotion.
So how can you use social media in OD?
Lydia gave five examples of how social media can be used in OD:
1. Organisation design project (blogging);
2. Organisation values project (Twitter);
3. Leadership development project (Twitter);
4. Idea generation (Wikis); and
5. Engagement dipstick (social survey).
To end off, Lydia shared a few take-homes, which she has learned through her use of social media:
1. Time is still an issue: Some people think that using social media will cut down on the time you spend on a particular intervention. The truth is that social media does take up a lot of time and you will need to carve out a section of your day to dedicate to this channel.
2. Always be transparent when you use social media. If you aren’t, people won’t trust you and will block out any message you try to transmit.
3. The bandwidth in South Africa is still a problem.
4. Some people, usually members of the older generation, have a block against communicating via social media. So before you start your OD intervention, make sure that you have gauged who you’re talking to in the particular organisation before you choose which channels you’ll communicate through.
5. Social media is only part of the programme, so don’t structure your entire programme around social media. Otherwise you’ll risk not communicating your message to a key group of people.
