Discuss about the Essay on Social Networking.
Since 2010, there has been a drastic use of the social media for the process of recruitment by the HR professionals and it escalated from 6% to 89% in recent times (Vaast & Kaganer, 2013). Since the candidates are more tech-savvy than ever, the HR professional has to equally skilled as well to identify the right candidates and screen out the wrong ones. This argumentative essay focused on various aspects of use of social media at workplace by analyzing a case study and found that there is an immense contribution of social network platforms and discussed the various associated theories.
There has been a significant advancement in the field of information technology that is evident from the widespread use of the platforms of social media affecting the business throughout several industries. This has changed dramatically the way of working for the human resource (HR) professionals (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013). Social media has helped the human resource professionals drastically in the processes of hiring and screening of applicants, development and training of talents, announcing corporate changes and obtaining company feedback. Apart from this, various outlets of social media are used by the companies and their HR professionals for posting job openings, interacting with the employees and clients and making of product announcements (De Choudhury & Counts, 2013). This argumentative essay will research on the use of the social media in workplace and its impact on recruitment screening, organizational culture and its business activities. The generational issues, legislation and change management theories of the stakeholders will also be analyzed in context with a case study based on the use of social media at the workplace by the HR professionals.
It is evident that the employees are increasingly mixing their professional and personal work content on the sites of social media and this is a challenge for the employers who utilizes the social media for screening of the potential candidates and setting the guidelines for the social media usage for their employees impacting the business of the organization and the proprietary interests. Considering the ethical theory, implementation of social media in the process of hiring is a question of whether it should be practiced or not. The choice is a matter of argument for the HR professional who chooses to use social media to search and screen for the right candidates as legally and ethically, they are breaching the Privacy Act 1988 (Bryman, 2015). Recruiters, HR professionals and employers often search the social media databases on internet for the prospective applicants that include reviewing of the personal blog or website of the applicant and other social media platforms. Arguably, it can be stated that this is a healthy practice as the posts which have been made public by the user has been done intentionally for a wide range of audiences and the employer counts as one amongst them. A counter argument will state that the user might have put up the posts for his personal friend circle and is not intended for any kind of professional judgment as they have been posted under varying situations and circumstances that have nothing to do with his professional behavior (Fuchs, 2013). These factors keep the argument alive whether it is ethical to browse the profiles of the potential candidates and select them or screen them out based on their social media updates. From the perspectives of a HR professional, it can be stated that researching the social media content of an applicant can prevent the company from future risks. The applicants with negative content in social media can give an idea to the employer about his criminal or dangerous propensities. Considering the flip side, it can be stated that rejected candidates can bring about discrimination lawsuits against the employer for using their personal information for rejecting them. Therefore, social media can be used ethically in recruitment by outsourcing the job of research to a third party and based on their report, the company can make further decision whether to retain or discard a particular applicant as it involves the future risks of the organization. From the perspectives of stakeholder’s theory, it is a matter of discussion whether the employer should monitor an employee on the social media. The right to privacy of the employees in the workplace is restricted and therefore, a balance is essential for ensuring the right of the employees to privacy and the right of the employer to access and monitor the usage of social media of an employee (Vallor, 2012). This also includes the decline of productivity due to engagement in the social media, loss of proprietary and confidential information, revealing of the private facts with defamation and screening of potential violations. Since this concept is burdened with potential traps that the employer might face from the stakeholders due to the involvement of the Privacy Act, it is necessary for the employers to consider carefully the memos of the act to prevent the adoption of the unethical ways to monitor the employees (Colleoni, 2013). Arguably, the company can consider consulting an attorney for revising or preparing the social media policies.
With the passage of time, there have been changes in the attitude and practices of the employees and the young employees tend to possess a different attitude compared to the older workers in terms of commitment, responsibility and privacy. They are more open to discuss their personal and professional lives on the social media and this makes the employers alright to use these sites for gleaning information about their employees (Loader, Vromen & Xenos, 2014). The young workers accept social media as a platform to know more about their colleagues as individuals which in turn, gives the employers an opportunity to learn more about their employees as individuals. With the rise of the social media, it has added a new layer to the job related activities of the young workers and they use this platform to acquire more skills that are job related (Drouin et al., 2015). It has increased the permeability of the boundary between leisure and work that has been used to strengthen their personal relationships with their co-workers. More than half of the young workers and job seekers use social media tools for building an online career and conducting job search. They also interact with the employers on the social platform that also facilitates the employers to scrutinize their employees prior to their appointment. Arguably, it can be stated that the use of social media as a tool of recruitment and gleaning candidate information can have its challenges and opportunities. Ability to attract and target specific candidates and increasing efficiency and speed of the talent search process are the basic advantages of social media that are used up by the employers. Since the candidates can obtain information about the employer or can even contact the present employees of the organization for a realistic preview of the job, it becomes a both sided affair and the young workers become more open to regarding fetching of their personal information by the employees from the social platforms (Sánchez Abril, Levin & Del Riego, 2012). However, there are challenges that exist in this form of mutual agreement that are primarily based on the ethical principles. Considering the legislative perspectives, it is considered unethical and inappropriate for the employers to seek information about the personal lives of the workers. It is evident that the major reason for the disqualification of the potential candidates has been their lifestyle rather than the information that is employment oriented. Consequently, the employers might expose themselves to the discrimination charges from the candidates who do not have social media access or the groups who have been under-represented in a strategy of targeted campaign. Therefore, from the perspectives of a counter argument, it can be stated that like the advantages of using both sided information from the social media, it also have its disadvantages that are detrimental to both the employer and the young workers. The openness of the young workers towards providing personal information to their employers on the social media can invite threat to their candidature and employment status if they choose to post obscene and violent content due to indiscretion. On the other hand, these indiscretions can be used as an opportunity by the employers to verify their selected candidate about his personality and integrity that will act as facilitators of preventing faulty recruitment and prevent future risks to the organization (Eichhorst et al., 2014). Although the young workers are quite aware of these hazards, they choose to display the better side of their character to avoid professional disqualification while applying for jobs or while in an employment.
With the ever-growing pool of talented candidates, it is becoming increasingly becoming difficult for the HR professionals to screen and find the appropriate candidate from the application deluge that are received for vacant positions. The employers are facing a tough challenge to find the candidates with the suitable qualifications and skills for the required position. Under such circumstances, the HR professionals are looking beyond the traditional methods of hiring for making targeted recruiting campaigns (Couldry, 2012). Since the employers are not getting enough opportunities for engaging effectively and determining the fitness of the right candidates, therefore social media has become an efficient and effective means of improving visibility for referrals and engagement and making it a win-win situation for the employers. Unitarism and pluralism are the two perspectives of management in an organization that determines the type of management or the liberty of the employees in an organization. Following the traits of unitarism, it can be stated that with the implementation of social media in the HR policies, the management and the employees will emphasize on mutual co-operation and share a common view of utilizing the platform for mutual benefits (Bechmann & Lomborg, 2013). On the contrary, the traits of pluralism will divide the organization into divergent and powerful sub-groups having legitimate loyalties with its set of leaders and objectives. This will divide the concept of implementing social media into the sub-groups of employee and employer where co-ordination and persuasion can also lead to the generation of conflicts. Arguably, it can be stated that these conflicts can lead to positive changes and evolution for the use of social media in the workplace for the betterment of the organization and its employees, converting it into a win-win situation for the employers. From the ideas of strategic HRM, it can be argued that social media not only aids in screening and selecting the right candidate, it also makes the candidates aware of the organizational goals prior to their employment that makes the task of the employers easy and the candidate stays well prepared for achieving the organizational goals, even before their selection. Aligning the candidates with the organizational goals amplifies the organizational values that create a win-win situation for the employers (Treem & Leonardi, 2013). Relational psychological contracts deal with the mutual expectations of outcomes and inputs and from this perspectives, it can be stated that social media can take a pivotal position in building a relationship between the employees and the employer. It reflects the feelings from the standpoint of the employees and the employers utilize the platform of social media for enabling the mobilization and awareness of the employees to the level of scale and sophistication that has a predominant effect on the success of the organization. Arguably, combination of the traditional models and modern tools of HRM can bring about a win-win situation for the employers. High commitment HRM is the process of theorized communication process that aims for the integration of the process and content effectively that links to the organizational performance (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012). Social media can be an effective tool in developing this link and act deliberately to increase the performance of the employees. Human capital and knowledge management aims for the integration of the human capital with the knowledge sharing for managing the organizational networks and social media can be an effective tool that can help in building this network. All these theories arguably help the employers to be in a win-win situation with the application of social media.
From this argumentative essay, it can be stated that the impact of social media in increasing in the workplace. This is affecting the communication among the managers, job applicants and the employees, controlling and promoting their reputation and development of the relationship among the colleagues. It can be recommended by considering all the theories discussed in this essay that developing a policy for the usage of social media in workplace and recruitment process would not breach the privacy of the employees and would not put the organization at the risk of discrimination lawsuits by the rejected candidates (Bolton et al., 2013). From the Australian perspectives, it is important for the employers to be well versed with the impact of social media on employment, recruitment and termination for reaping the maximum benefits.
References
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Bolton, R. N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., … & Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 245-267.
Bryman, A. (2015). Social research methods. Oxford university press.
Colleoni, E. (2013). CSR communication strategies for organizational legitimacy in social media. Corporate Communications: an international journal, 18(2), 228-248.
Couldry, N. (2012). Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Polity.
De Choudhury, M., & Counts, S. (2013). Understanding affect in the workplace via social media. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 303-316). ACM.
Drouin, M., O’Connor, K. W., Schmidt, G. B., & Miller, D. A. (2015). Facebook fired: Legal perspectives and young adults’ opinions on the use of social media in hiring and firing decisions. Computers in Human Behavior,46, 123-128.
Eichhorst, W., Boeri, T., De Coen, A., Galasso, V., Kendzia, M., & Steiber, N. (2014). How to combine the entry of young people in the labour market with the retention of older workers?. IZA Journal of European Labor Studies,3(1), 1.
Fuchs, C. (2013). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.
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Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. A. (2014). The networked young citizen: social media, political participation and civic engagement.Information, Communication & Society, 17(2), 143-150.
Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 17(3), 337-353.
Sánchez Abril, P., Levin, A., & Del Riego, A. (2012). Blurred boundaries: Social media privacy and the twenty?first?century employee. American Business Law Journal, 49(1), 63-124.
Treem, J. W., & Leonardi, P. M. (2013). Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Annals of the International Communication Association, 36(1), 143-189.
Vaast, E., & Kaganer, E. (2013). Social media affordances and governance in the workplace: An examination of organizational policies. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 19(1), 78-101.
Vallor, S. (2012). Flourishing on facebook: virtue friendship & new social media. Ethics and Information technology, 14(3), 185-199.
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