Social Networking in Organizations Today

Discuss about the Human Resources Issues for Use of Social Networking Sites in the Organisations.

Recently, there have been serious discussions regarding the use of social networking by employees and organizations. There are quite a number of social networking sites and many employees, especially the younger ones belong to at least one. Recent studies have placed Facebook in front with well over 1 billion users per month. As much as almost everyone agrees that social networking has brought many benefits to both the organizations and employees, there has not been a widely accepted approach to ensure either party’s rights are not infringed. The issue with privacy is one area that has been given a lot of focus. Many people hold the opinion that employers are infringing on the privacy of their employees by checking on their social media profiles. The aim of this essay is therefore to analyze the various issues surrounding the use of social networks.

It will discuss in detail ways of ensuring that use of social media is beneficial to both the employer and the employee without infringing on either’s privacy rights. Further, the essay will discuss whether it is right for employers to find work related information about the employees from these social network sites. This is especially in regard to the social media profiles created by employees to discuss their work. Important contemporary HRM issues are analyzed and various generational views discussed.

Human Resource Management is one area that has gone through a lot of changes recently. Different contemporary issues are arising each day. There is therefore need to find solutions to these issues. Some of the current issues are the advent of social networking bringing in the employee privacy issues, multigenerational workforce with different attitudes towards work related topics, new recruitment strategies and employees’ performance management. All these are important issues that if not addressed properly can severely affect productivity. They mainly concern the HRM department of the organization because they are human related. It is therefore not a surprise that most of the current researches regarding organizational performance being undertaken tend to focus more on human resources.

Recruitment is one of the most important activities performed by HRM (Foot & Hook, 2008). Every organization’s goal is to hire and retain the best employees in the market (Rietveld, Gorter, & Nijkamp, 1995). To achieve this, there are a lot of processes and activities involved that consume considerable amount of time and resources. The process starts with job analysis to determine the kind of employee required. Job analysis basically involves description and specification of the job. Another important aspect of hiring process is the selection. Here different activities like interviews are undertaken to identify the best suited individual for the job. A detailed analysis of all these activities shows that the organization is committed to getting as much information as possible regarding the candidates for the job. With social networks, especially the career related ones like LinkedIn, most of these details can easily be accessed. For instance, sites like Facebook can readily give information regarding ones age, educational background, previous employment, hobbies, sexual orientation, religion, political views and many more (Brown & Vaughn, 2012). The question is whether it infringes on the privacy of the individual. Some HR mangers think so (Peacock 2008).

Difficulties in HRM Practice

Performance management is another important function of the HRM. Due to the current hard economic times, organizations are cutting costs by ensuring maximum utilization of resources, including human.  After successfully hiring the desired individual, the organization expects their performances to be commensurate with the set standards. Continuous monitoring of performance is therefore something that is currently being given a lot of consideration. Just like in the case of recruitment, managers and supervisors can actually get some information regarding employees’ performance from the social media. For example, an employee may take time off to attend to an emergency like a sick child only to post on social networking sites pictures of themselves at the beach. As much as such information is helpful to the organization, it also brings up the issue of employees right to privacy.

Considering the two scenarios, recruitment and performance management, privacy is a big problem in organizations. It has particularly generated a lot of debate considering that some of these individuals have knowingly set their profiles to public. This, mostly prevalent with Facebook and LinkedIn users, brings up the question of whether it is private anymore. Many countries like Australia and Japan have set laws that control the use of social media by employers in hiring and monitoring performance of their employees. In Japan they will be infringing on the Japanese law that relates to collection and use of individual’s personal information and in Australia the Australian law relating to discrimination and data protection (Abate, Hoffman, Robertson, Rogers, & Zeppenfeld, 2011). Despite the existence of such laws, many organizations agree that they still use social media to get information regarding their employees and others have used it to disqualify some candidates during recruitment. According to (careerbuilder.com 2009), over 45% of employers referred to social media profiles before hiring and another 11% of those interviewed were willing to do so . More worrying is the fact that very few cases exist of these organizations being sued for this infringement. This may be because of the difficulty in realizing and proving the infringement or they might just be unaware of the existence of such laws.

There is need for an amicable solution to this privacy issue to be found because both the employer and the employee are affected by the consequences. The essence of social networking is to interact with many people and discuss different issues freely. Employees are unable to use their social network profiles freely for fear of being monitored by their employers. Potential candidates for a job are also dismissed before being given chance to defend themselves. Due to the sensitivity of the information in the social media like sexual orientation, political views and religion, there is the danger of discrimination by the employer (Lynas, 2007). Employees may also be forced to change their profiles to private limiting the number of people they interact with. On the other hand, the employer may miss out on the best talents due to reliance on social media information which sometimes is never correct. There also exists a possibility of the organization being sued for violation of privacy laws resulting in bad public image, fines and legal costs. By restricting the monitoring of individual’s social media profiles by organizations, the employers are deprived of important information regarding their employees. This is because most of the time people tend to discuss issues freely on social media than on other platforms like interviews. A lot of time and resources are spent on trying to get information that can otherwise be accessed in 10 minutes from the social networks. A company’s reputation can also be damaged as a result of employees posting negative information regarding the company on social media. They can only do this when they know the company is not monitoring their social media profiles. Companies may even end up being held liable to action of its employees on social media by a third party especially if the offence was committed at the workplace.

Recruitment

Multigenerational workforce is another difficult issue that HRM has to deal with. According to (Taylor & Kochhar, 2009), older workers are staying in the labor force longer than before. This can be attributed to other reasons such as the younger generations studying more thereby limiting their working time, organizations’ preference of experienced workers and the fear of financial instability after retirement. The challenge is that these different generations harbor different views regarding different issues such as privacy, commitment, responsibility and loyalty (Smola & Sutton, 2002). It is therefore difficult to formulate HR policies that apply to the whole organization. Regarding privacy, studies have shown that younger employees, otherwise known as generation Y or millennial (Eisner, 2005), tend to share more information, especially on social media, than their older counterparts (Brosdahl & Carpenter, 2011). They mainly get to social media to interact with family, friends and other acquaintances and contribute in important discussions (Bolton, 2013). This can be attributed in part to the generally larger presence of younger generation in the social media platforms than the older ones. It is therefore easier for HR practitioners to get information regarding them.

Commitment can be defined as simply being dedicated or loyal to something or someone. Job satisfaction can lead to commitment and there is a relationship between job satisfaction and age (Kacmar & Ferris, 1989). The older generations always seems committed than the younger ones (Chen & Choi, 2008). As a result, the possibility of the younger employees quitting is normally higher. This can be attributed to many factors such as the need to further their education. Currently, a lot of emphasis is being put on education to an extent that a good number of young people who would otherwise be in employments are attending colleges. The opportunity to explore other jobs and gain more experience is also appealing to the younger generations. They quit for new challenges and experience. The need to grow professionally is also common among the younger generations. Lack of professional growth and development opportunities in their current employment leads to lack of commitment and they eventually quit.

The multigenerational workforce also holds different views regarding responsibility in the workplace. The older generation tends to be more responsible than the younger generation. Coupled with experience, the older workforce tends to hold higher positions in the organizations. Such positions come with responsibility. The natural urge to offer guidance to the younger ones also gives them responsibility. Technology use is another area where differences exist. The young employees embrace technological change more than the older ones. This may be because they grew at a time when the advancement in technology was already taking place and therefore they don’t have to be trained. For the older workforce, most of the technology was introduced later in their lives so they need to be trained to use them.

Performance Management

Despite the conflicting discussion regarding the use of social media and privacy, an amicable solution can actually be reached with neither parties feeling disadvantaged. An organization can use social media to their benefit without infringing on their employees’ privacy. Employers should always read privacy policies of the various social media sites to know the extent of information they are entitled to obtain. The person whose information is being obtained from the social media should be informed and their permission sought prior to (Schoshinski, 2013). This is important minimizing law suits against the organization. Furthermore, they should be given chance to defend themselves regarding contentious information in their social media profiles. This should be done before any decisions are reached (Bates, 2013) . To avoid disqualification on the basis of areas that can lead to accusations of discrimination like sexual orientation, the individual who compiles the report regarding social media activities of the candidate should not be involved in the selection process.

Use of social media policy should be developed in the organization to provide guidance without necessarily curtailing on rights. All stakeholders, the employees and the employer should be involved in drafting it. The policy should set out ways of responsibly using the social media by the employees. It should not be used in a way that paints the organizations name negatively nor should it be used to bully, harass or blackmail fellow employees. For example a journalist working with a reputable media house cannot use his/her social media platform to post racial content as much as the profile is private. An employer can ban use of social media at the workplace to reduce chances of third party rights infringement. This saves the company from the possibility of being held liable for the actions of their employees on social media while at work. It should also set out consequences for breach of the social media policy.

Another way to ensure a win-win situation regarding use of social media and privacy is for the employer to train employees on various issues that constitute infringement of rights. Many people don’t know what constitute discrimination and bullying. By training them, the employer may escape responsibility if any of its employees breaks the rules regarding social media. Employees should also choose what to make public and what to remain private. This will prevent their private information from being accessed by the employers and any other unauthorized parties.

Privacy Issue in Social Networking

Conclusion 

In conclusion, progressive employers can actually transform the widely held notion about social networking being advantageous to the employee and not the employer. With the right strategies social networking can just be as beneficial to the employer too. As much as employees have a right to privacy, the consequences should not be harmful to the organization. The actions of the employees in social media platforms should be responsible and ones that actually builds the organization. The organizations’ need for information regarding employment candidates and existing employees should not infringe on their privacy rights. They can get the information they need by using proper channels like informing the concerned of their intentions to gather information about them from the social media. No information gathered from the social media should be used to conclusively make a decision about an individual as this may result to discrimination. They should be give chance to clarify on different issues and contents of their profiles. Setting of organizational policies regarding social media use by employees and training the employees on the arising issues are very important in achieving success for both the employer and the employee.

Reference List 

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Bates, S. (2013, March 19). Use Social Media Smartly When Hiring.

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Chen, P. J., & Choi, Y. (2008). Generational differences in work values: a study of hospitality management. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , 595-615.

Eisner, S. (2005). Managing Generation Y. SAM Advanced Management Journal , 34-42.

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Kacmar, K. M., & Ferris, G. R. (1989). Theoretical and methodological considerations in the age-job satisfaction relationship. Journal of Applied Psychology , 201-207.

Lynas, J. (2007). Social networking sites: friend or foe? Personnel Today .

Peacock, L. (2008). Most employers don’t check Facebook when screening applicants. Personnel Today .

Rietveld, R. G., Gorter, P., & Nijkamp, P. (1995). Issues in Recruitment strategies: an economic perspective. International Journal of Career Management , 3-13.

Schoshinski, A. (2013, August 1). Using Social Media as an Effective Recruitment Tool for Nonprofits. A Non profit White Paper . Chicago, IL.

Smola, K. W., & Sutton, C. D. (2002). Generational differences: Revisiting generational work values for the new millennium. Organizational Behavior , 363-382.

Taylor, P., & Kochhar, R. (2009). America’s Changing Workforce: Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer. Pew Research Center.