SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE WORKPLACE
SOCIAL MEDIA IS CHANGING THE WAY
EMPLOYEES INTERACT AT OFFICE
T
he expanding growth of social media has significantly changed
the way people interact with each other. It has not only changed the
ways of communication, but has also presented great opportunities for
businesses in areas of public relations, recruiting, organizational learning and other human resource functions. Some of the well-known examples of social media platforms include LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+,
Pinterest, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Second Life and Wordpress.
Below are discussed some of the innovative ways in which employers
are leveraging social media for various HR functions so as to derive
maximum organizational benefit.
1. RECRUITMENT
With millions of potential candidates connected through networking
sites, companies are now shifting their approach from “Looking for
employees in case of current vacancy” to “Creating a pool of talented
employees”. Social networks are viewed by corporations as a means to
recruit both passive and active candidates in a personal yet professional
way. It is helping recruiters to look beyond candidate’s business acumen
to personal characteristics, providing them with a huge engagement
rate and cost effectiveness. It is also serving as a tool to understand
candidates in terms of their career graph, areas of interest and professional network
Some of the ways in which the recruiters are sourcing candidates using
social platform is by posting jobs through their own accounts, creating
corporate career pages, designing online games, etc. Few such examples are Marriot Hotel, L’Oreal and P&G. These companies have designed
online games on Facebook mainly to attract mid-level talent. Players are
given a competitive scenario where they are evaluated on skills and the
top scorers are recruited by the company.
21 • Designfreebies Magazine • www.designfreebies.org