Three reasons why HR should embrace social media

The Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social media page that attracts both customers and employees to engage with the content posted by HR. Organizations are going through a sea change concerning their social media policy, and HR is fully embracing this change. From an employee perspective, the timing could not have been better with more individuals using social media on various personal and professional work devices.

The new-age HR uses social media for

Recruitment

In a study done by BLR's HR Daily Advisor, 69% of HR used social media for end-to-end recruiting, leading to lowered costs and higher recruiting efficiencies. In a similar study by SilkRoad, 91% of recruiters used social media to source and engaged prospects and do background checks on candidates.

Engagement

Internal social media tools, such as Yammer, has become a great way to motivate employees and retain talent through employee recognition. Social media has also become a platform to publish the training calendar and encourage the creation and use of knowledge repositories. 34% of HR professionals have affirmed their social media usage for training purposes, and 41% believe in implementing employee engagement.

Collaboration

HR is turning to social media to encourage team building and innovation by helping employees connect. When done the right way, this sense of community and solidarity motivates employees to visit the organization's public social media pages to post Likes or Share recruitment bulletins or news of awards and achievements. That makes the cycle of engagement and collaboration a self-sustaining ecosystem for innovation, knowledge building, and talent retention.

In the SilkRoad survey, 67% of companies surveyed have already adopted or plan to adopt internal social media. As for the professionals themselves, 60.3% said their social media usage would increase this year.

HR must continue to embrace this change and develop a structured way to weave social media into the organization's fabric to leverage it for both brand identity and as an enhanced way for employees to work, learn, and communicate.