Encompassing the lives of millions, the innovative twenty-first century influence of social media continues to permeate lifestyle dynamics; as well as pervade worldwide employment for employees, job seekers, and the corporations that hire them — comprised both of positive and negative effects. Sustaining remarkable increases during 2009, social media continues to thrive so much so that it’s brought on a new age of time; shattering technological research predictions. Named for the dispersion of online social interactions, social media’s notable presence continues its dissemination through hundreds of platforms and highly developed socialization interfaces; democratizing knowledge, data, and information — social media offers a uniquely sophisticated chance for users to become their own personalized media sources. While the modern day allocation allows for once one sided monologues to develop into two person communication, its technological allowance extends even further with the possibility of group based global dialogs; social media has made available the production of content instead of mere consumption. In accordance with modern times, social media has brought forth a pioneering “attentive age”, structuring its establishment from the “age of information”; this prevailing age relates to the escalation of attention due to the abundance of information available on a constantly evolving Internet — unlike search engines of the information age, the new age focuses directly towards the user-based content sharing of social media. The fundamental idea of the “attention” age is to collect and educate from the user-based information proliferating the Internet, such empowerments have brought great benefits to global corporations; utilized as an outstanding achievement in the assessment of an employee’s background — no doubt true to controversy.
Ubiquitous within the current workplace the social networks of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace; LinkedIn being the only professional social concept in recent studies of workplace social media – highly dominate with corporate employees. Surprisingly common virtual worlds in the workplace include Second Life and World of Warcraft; reflecting that astonishing percentiles of workers are not only acquiring personal user-generated data but wasting corporate time playing Internet based role playing games. Other data, from this study, also shows the supremacy of personal blogs over that of corporate blogs. The prevalences of social media were not only found on the hard drives of corporate employees but appeared in almost equal amounts with employers, indicating that while employees choose to consume and contribute their personal user-generated media; high powered superior officials are no different in exploring the current day innovation. Manipulating the action of looking busy with social media methods totes quite a bit of risk; starting from pre-employment inquires, these risks, often expand through employment and end with the separation from the workplace — in other words, social media carries a weighty risk to an employee through the employment lifecycle. So much so that current day employers are sustaining extensive education as to the steps they should take to address the use and misuse of social media at various stages within the workplace; due to such a immersive focus corporations must consider workplace social media and come up with a systematic plan against such behaviors that have the potential of bringing profitability down.
Current day social media supplies corporate employers with data, almost unlimited in its subjectivity, about current employees and most importantly new applicants; providing a wealth of public information that priory wasn’t available, due to its public nature obtaining such plentiful data occurs with technological ease — needing only a name and location. Operating on the premise of standard public information disclosures or other types of voluntarily disclosures; social media provides knowledge regarding employees that would not be made available through the methods of resumes and interviews. With the contemporary idea of providing users with their own channel of media, the concept of current-day social media allows users to share and feel comfortable sharing an array of information; in some cases letting their guard down too much — which is just what corporate employers seek to find. Employers can legally make use of any data found through the means of social media that pertains to poor communication skills, poor worth ethic, illegal drug use, fabrications on resumes, poor writing skills, unprofessional feelings regarding past employers and co-workers, ethnocentric or racist remarks, and a wide array of other discriminating tendencies; making the hiring process easier and far more efficient for the corporation as a whole. With presence of such public information online the employer is given a broadened look into the image a person maintains online via their online persona. Such content that is deemed unprofessional, as described above, reveals poor judgment; while also reflecting truth as to how that employee may choose to carry their position within a company — such unprofessionalism can be judged to be highly negative for a corporation. Legally, a fine line exists for corporations as to what kind of information they are able to utilize in their judgments; material pertaining to ones sexual preference, race, age, ethnicity, creed, disability, religious standing, political affiliation, and other unlawful discriminatory content cannot be used; however it may be difficult for a employee or applicant to prove that social media was used to find such information — also it proves difficult if sued, for the corporate employer to prove such information was found, but was not used, to influence the hiring decision.
Amidst ones employment with a corporation and within the corporate environment, an employee who uses social media must be aware of posed risks; this type of media can cause an awkward and latent situation for harassment if another co-worker finds such to be a tasteless act. Usually this occurs when a co-worker or superior invites another co-worker or subordinate onto their social media list; there information may be found that to some may seem without class, harassing, and/or inappropriate for the work environment. Likewise, one not invited to join a social networking site may feel as other people are whispering about them behind their back. The most obvious risk that stems from using social media in the workplace is that of getting fired due to misuse and the effect social media has on a workers’ productivity, many corporations are now foreseeing such risk; blocking social media sites from their insider network and/or tracking employee’s computer use. Some corporations have started viewing social media as a workplace hazard due to the decrease in production and also seeing it as a great threat; such threat exists when employees disclose confidential information regarding the company such as insider trade secrets, personal matters, financial standings, and proprietary information. Passed material such as disclosing insider facts and trade secrets remains illegal and punishable under criminal courts, as insider trading causes an array of problems with a larger corporate stock scenario. A secondary threat to corporations, and possibly the largest of current-day social media, is that with great ease an employee can damage the successful reputation of the brand; skewing the methodical practice of corporate marketing, which takes a keen developed skill to sustain with profitability. Unprofessional employee blogs and other social media means can decrease customer attitude and also loyalty.
With such vilification a corporate risk, an increasing amount of employers are tightening the reigns with the concept of today’s social media influence; most private corporations have disallowed this modern technology in the workplace. With these private holdings, the chief to power has made the relative decision as that no benefit can come from social media, it has no place in the workplace, and is of no benefit to business. Other companies, on the other hand, may allow some social media due to twenty-first century benefits of marketing; these allowances may be controlled with an iron fist and only made allowable to certain individuals; in example customer based service that has been extended to sites such as that of Twitter. With quite an increased focus to a changing Internet, all superior ranking corporate personal should be trained in both the benefits and risks of social media, as should human resource officials, those in Internet based marketing, and chiefs in power. It is suggested to any corporation that allows such use of social media to create a policy that inserts broad language for the employee, each policy should state social media’s acceptable use, and clearly define that misuse of such tool can result in termination — lawyers for the company should also note that with the rapid changes of social media any constructed policy should be updated frequently. Those employee’s with access to social media should be educated in acceptable use verses misuse and use social media only with extreme professionalism; careful as to not expose corporate standings and give out false information that could harm the marketing of a brand. Those new hires to any corporations should be well aware that due to social media being that of public information it can be used to make the final determination of hire, thus it should be used maturely and with a professional eye.
(Copyright © Social Media News 2010)
