Corporate Communication and Relationship in HR Using Social Media

            In their quest to achieve business optimization, organizations have become increasingly reliant upon social media technologies. Using social media for communicating with external and internal constituents can reduce business operation costs and improve the effectiveness of strategic managements and operations.  In order to gain a competitive edge, “talent leaders will need to break down barriers between departments and functions, and get people to reach across the organization for information and decisions rather than staying within their own comfort zones.”  This paper describes how organizations use social media to optimize their operational performances in cost effective manners.

It goes almost without saying that the businesses that run best are those that recruit talented people who best fit the needs, culture and structure of an organization.  Unfortunately, hiring the best fit is just as challenging for job seekers as it is for potential employers.  Normally, there are more qualified job candidates applying to any particular job opening than there are people to fill it.  No one can predict with certainty the outcome of hiring any particular person with respect to his or her fit within the organization.  Social media can help to narrow down the pool of qualified potential candidates by allowing employers to develop working relationships with those individuals who are more interested in working with their employers.

To understand potential workers with greater clarity, employers have developed online professional communities to network with potential future job candidates.  In order to join these online communities, the members must already possess a degree in the relevant professional fields.  Over periods of interaction with the members, employers can develop a better understanding of the participant’s levels of qualification for future job openings.  When positions within the employer’s organization open up, the recruiters will focus on a smaller circle of individuals of whom they would like to hire.

The idea of a ‘best fit’ is perhaps best understood as that candidate who can fits the positions they are hired for, but that also show the greatest potential for upward motility.  To assist the employees further in their quest for professional development, employers should assign career mentors to guide those employees who need extra support within the workplace.  To streamline the mentoring processes, mentors and mentees can even conduct many of their communications online.  Mentors and mentees can work together regardless of their locations and times.

Through these online methods of communications, mentees can also consult other mentors at the same time.  Since online dialogues are strictly confidential, the mentees become more open to their mentors and will seek advice from the experts before any problems arise. These mentors are not substitutes for the mentees’ supervisors, and the mentees still need to report to their supervisors with their own work progress.  The mentors are there to help the mentees to become more strategically adept and tactical in terms of how they approach the mentees’ work assignments.  

Employers invest in employee professional growth and development due in large part to the belief that though an individual may presently have less experience, with proper guidance and grooming, they may have the potential to become a future leader.  To avoid talent attrition, employers can develop and deploy internal social media designed to inform their employees about openings in other departments within the same organizations.  Instead of resigning from their present organization to work for a better position outside, employees can work in other areas or departments within the same organization.

HR departments are not always located within the same facilities in which employees work.  In order to overcome this and in order to engage employees over distances, HR departments have developed separate internal social media for discussing the total reward packages offered by their employers.  On HR benefits and compensations social media sites, HR staff members work with individual employees to select reward packages that best fit both the employers’ budgets and their employees’ interests. 

Passionate and talented workers do not work solely for monetary rewards; rather, they also work for the excitement of working on the tasks that they love to perform.  To improve their professional experience, external IT professionals and students work collaboratively on online projects at reduced costs for various IT firms.  These technology firms are curious about what their online projects would be ultimately transformed into.  Online open access projects are intended to serve as incubators of innovative IT ideas.  

Once the online projects reach the revenue-generating stage, the IT department might recruit leading freelance IT professionals, at which point the IT department can direct their internal IT professionals to further advance these projects.  By employing these lower-wages virtual IT professional, IT firms can save money and resources over what they would have paid by hiring similar types of IT professions in the United States, which can cost the firms even more money.   

Businesses have realized that best decisions cannot be made by small groups of executive-level workers.  Major business decisions are made most effectively when the businesses consider suggestions and comments from every facet of the business.  Realizing the significance of individual stakeholder points of view, ideally upper management should expand the scope of their meetings to include the stakeholders and the public.  Due the limitation of spaces, the participants can connect to the meetings through Skype-like video conferences.  As a participant in the executive boardroom meeting described, “We felt the empowerment in the room.”

Another participant praised that, “by fostering a discussion across the entire organization, Benioff [an executive] has been able to better align the whole workforce around its mission. The event served as a catalyst for the creation of a more open and empowered culture at the company.”  Every stakeholder feels empowered by participating in the meeting and contributing positively to the final outcome of the companies.  Organizations feel more confident about the positive impacts that they can have on their businesses when all possible factors are considered, and no stone is left unturned.

Hoyt, a business leader in marketing, predicted that, “[business] will see increased productivity, quality and even employee retention in the long term.”  When employees feel they are in control, and are valued as integral decision-makers for their working environment, they will more likely consider taking ownership of their work and will also participate more actively in this work, along the way collaborating more effectively with teammates when they are all part of the same working families.