I wrote a post for The Conference Board Review about Twitter, Social Media, and CEOs.
You can roll your eyes at Twitter, but don’t miss the opportunity to speak to multiple audiences in a more authentic voice—regardless of your initial comfort level or gift for language or ability to type quickly with your thumbs. If you overlook the importance of a simple and elegant tool like Twitter, it means that you are probably overlooking bigger and more important trends in the economy.
Are you a Human Resources leader? Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Is anyone on your HR leadership team or executive team on Twitter? Does your company allow employees to access social media sites?
Give me the scoop. Is your company doing it right or doing it wrong?
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Am I on Twitter and Facebook? Yes to both (loath the former though). Do we allow access as an organisation? We use Twitter, Facebook and blogging throughout our organisation and therefore allow access to all staff to use them.
The only gap is when I look at my fellow board members. Are they on Facebook and Twitter? Some yes, some no. Do they “get it”? Resounding no. But are they receptive to it? Absolutely.
And surely thats the most important thing? We can’t all be cutting edge, but we need those around us who are and to respect their judgements (I am by no means including myself in that having just worked out my Blackberry was a phone too…..doh). We can’t and won’t always be our own target demographic but we need to differentiate between our own personal views and what is right for our organisation.
Social media is only going to get more diverse and thus more popular. Understanding how people are communicating and interacting and how we can leverage that within our organisations is critical to staying in touch with our market place, whether we are looking for consumers or employees.
I was encouraged by my organization to get a Twitter account (I actually have two – one personal, one professional), but has given surprisingly little guidance about how to use it, and what to communicate (and what NOT to say) via this tool.
I’m pretty careful about guarding my organization’s brand while on the site (which is why I opened a personal handle the same day – to say what I couldn’t say as a representative of my org), but I do worry about how others from my company are using it. I haven’t seen any gross violations of taste or decorum thus far, but a lot of freedom and the absence of any guidelines make me a little nervous.
Dude, we are in the “education” stage about twitter right now. I’m actually building the plans and am presenting them this month.
Facebook however jumped the shark the moment my Opponent’s mother sent me a friend request.
As a CEO, company policy is open to all. Personally, available time ebbs and flows such that it’s hard to make a consistent time commitment to participate more in the social media. Direct and indirect emails (LinkedIn) already approach 1 to 2 hundred a day. (Fortunately, there’s enough boring conference calls that I can respond to many). Probably not in tune with current cultural norms, but it feels rude to me to not respond to an email that has some specificity to it. Watching Laurie’s attempts to respond to all posts here makes me more certain that I’ll keep my blog inside the firewall for just my employees.
I’ve been working in HR/Marketing for the last 13 years but I am a writer. To me, writing is my sanity. Twitter and my blog are therapeutic to me; I can foster my anger, frustration, saddness in keystrokes and clicks. However, I went too far with my last job and I think that was what got me fired. (http://tinyurl.com/dy42cd)
However, I ascertain that it is our current social communication genre and if you want to play the game, you need to get your gear. I do think, however, that technology has had an adverse reaction on the field of human resources … technology has taken the human out of Human Resources: http://tinyurl.com/b8248r
Laurie: great piece in the Conference Board magazine! As almost usual (:-)), you’re right on the money! How about some tips about what the HR leader should do when the CEO, who’s read your piece, comes to their office and says “So, this woman at the Conference Board says I should open a Twitter account. How do I do that and what do I do with it?”
I think I might be on every social networking site imaginable. The other ladies in my department? Not so much. Sure, a couple of them have a facebook page. But they all think Twitter is stupid. I try to tell them “Oh, thats how I found out about…” (from my Twitter)
I would not say that social networking sites are encouraged in our workplace. Mostly because we can’t even get half the employees to check their e-mail.
The real argument from our management team regarding the social networking sites in relation to our company having a presence is that our industry is such a niche market. We have few new product releases, and when I scoured Twitter to find other like-companies I had no success. I get it. So that is why I just have my own.
What did I learn on Twitter today? FREE CHICKEN!!! http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090430-tows-kfc-coupon-download
My company leans more toward doing it wrong. I personally have Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Linkedin etc. My boss asked me a few months ago if I knew what Twitter was or if I used it. I told her I did and explained how I used it as a profressional tool, rather than a tool to see what Ashton was wearing that day. My company would most likely be open to a corporate Twitter account but I can see it getting tabled due to concerns that employee productivity would drop.
We, as a company, are interested and learning. Twitter accounts are encouraged and LinkedIn is all but mandatory, while Facebook is mostly ignored for the time being. Currently, there are no specific rules around use – what to say, when to say it, and what not to say – and knowing our leaders, it will stay that way unless someone goes out of their way to abuse it. At the urging of our clients, who wanted to network with each other, we also recently launched a community on our own website for discussions on HR initiatives, workforce trends, etc. I won’t say we have the whole social media presence figured out, but we’re learning.
My client does not have an official Twitter presence, which gives the user masquerading as the company on Twitter quite a bit of opportunity. The fake account even has a few thousand followers. The client knows, of course, but they have yet to actually establish themselves on Twitter for real. Had they been more proactive, I don’t think this would have happened, at least not to the extent that it has.
Interestingly, they do have an internal version of Twitter built on an open-source platform that is slowly seeing more use. But thus far they have refrained from engaging with the real thing, which I think is a strategic error.
LinkedIn is pretty much standard for our team. Facebook access is offically blocked, but we have been able to get a few exemptions. The limited access has really hampered our ability to get a strong corporate presence established although we have had some success with people using personal profiles. Since we’re a private, faith-based, not-for-profit organization I don’t think personal profiles for professional use are a good long-term strategy.
Twitter hasn’t been blocked (yet) but so far only a few of us are on it, and even fewer are using it regularly. It isn’t habit yet, so we’re still working on getting it into the daily routine.
Laurie,
Our gang at Talent Revolution stretches from Ohio to Arizona. Figuring out how to manage a virtual workplace is crucial to what we do. There are times I think “I’m great at this” there are other times I think “I suck at this”.
As you’ve seen we interact publicly on Twitter and Facebook. We also interact privately on Yammer (to keep track of everyone) and in a private group on TR were we communicate important info and collaborate business ideas.
Running a start up on a show string budget also really forced us into learning how to leverage Social Media for what we do (Recruiting and Consulting) for FREE. Social Media is also a huge part of where we Market our Brand again for FREE.
I’ve learned that it can be the most powerful tool our team has. I’ve also learned it can be a black hole of productivity if we don’t execute focus control.
I don’t believe in a ton of rules and policies so I would never try to dictate the teams use of social media. Instead I believe in relentlessly communicating our outcomes, setting up every part of the business to reward based on performance results, give the team kick ass training and inspire the shit out of them.
We are using the resources out there….i.e. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogs, etc. My company also just launched their version of Twitter as well. However, I don’t see yet that these things have quite come into fruition….I think our intentions are on the right track, we just haven’t mastered the the controls yet.
Hi L,
My team gets it: I had to push and Prod, and lead by example. Thanks to the folks over at BrazenCareerist we have gotten over the hump in HR by blogging and tweeting!
My organization is starting to get it: We (HR) pull the organization along, we have close to 300 Linkedin members corporately- that about 65%…pretty good for for an organization that is skewed heavily with baby boomers…twitter and facebook are ramping quickly…
Got it…
PS great topic!!!
M
@Mark Awesome. An example of an HR leader who pushes the boundaries of social media. Hooray!
@HR Chick I am pretty impressed to hear it — you don’t have to master the controls. Baby steps are important, yo.
@Amanda That’s what it’s all about. It’s also about personal accountability and productivity, and you totally lead by example. Awesome x100.
@Susan There are people out there who say that the public/private are melding into one. I’m not so sure that’s true. I can appreciate the idea of sanctioning people who truly speak for your brand, though.
@Tim Everyone has an internal SMS/chat function, it seems. Ken and I used to chat on a system at Monsanto in 1997 at my first job! I just wonder why you’d abdicate your brand on Twitter? That seems reckless.
@TP Oh that’s just great. Very encouraging!
@adowling Well I’m glad you’re there to push for common sense usage of social media tools. You’ll get there…
@InkedHR I’m waiting for the free KFC Mash Bowl. Those are so deliciously gross. Mmmmm….
@China Well I could tell HR people how to use these tools — but the conference board wasn’t the right audience. HR leaders can hire me as a consultant (because my kitties need to eat) or maybe we can talk about this at SHRM in NOLA!
@Galina I dunno. I think technology has allowed HR to streamline, reduce commoditized activities, and focus on what it does best: acquiring and retaining talent. Now technology also does something else: puts bad HR teams in the spotlight. That’s okay by me.
@OldMan It’s truly difficult to keep up, but I still think the effort is worthwhile. You can be a truly revolutionary thinker and abandon email and create norms of communication. Set boundaries. Demand that other people make decisions so you’re not mired in minutia. I dunno, call me crazy, but you can outsource your LinkedIn management to some admin and start twittering about your company, your ideas, or your kids.
@HrPuf Both my mother and mother-in-law are on facebook. I don’t know how much they use it, but I like the idea of accessible technology; however, I don’t think my mother-in-law could stomach Twitter or MySpace.
@RedSeven Everyone is scared of sharing TMI or doing something wrong — and you certainly don’t want to put your company at risk — but I think the best way to learn about the rules of Twitter is to get on there and watch the best & the brightest. Follow their lead.
@TheHRD I love how the board is receptive. That’s really good news — and I love how social media permeates your organization. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
The company I work for has at least one twitter account promoting useful suggestions for one of our consumer products. Last week, our CEO blogged about twitter and the blog comments have been the most to any of his posts so far. Either people love it or see it as a time waster. Guessin’ that has to do with whether they have tried it or not.
we had been cut off from the outside world because one lousy employee was posting naked pictures of herself on myspace during the workday. then about a month ago, we opened the floodgates because so many in our industry are using youtube (for training videos), linkedin, and facebook. so, I’m on facebook and twitter, linkedin (of course), and we’re starting to use youtube, but not really getting there yet…those videos take time! our president-elect is using facebook like it was twitter (posting little things constantly) and has almost 600 business and social connections. it’s fantastic! but getting our staff to use it appropriately and to give value to our clients is going to be a tough challenge.
Everyone has offered great feedback to your post, but the question I’ve been trying to look at more recently is are any of you using social media to screen potential employees?
@Nick What do you think about screening employees this way? I’ve written about it, before, and I do not support using social media to screen potential employees. It’s not a reliable or valid way to determine anything.
@canttellyoumyname I’m glad your company is moving forward. I hate how one bad apple spoils the bunch.
@Tim G I wonder if Twitter/FB and all those other sites are like the old AOL chat rooms. They’re trendy, now, but will fade away. I just like the idea that a company is open to the technology.
Dude, I wonder if that’s a gender difference in how we view Facebook. My opponent loves staying in contact with the Moms, I love ‘em, but phone is more than enough. Grace Boyle wrote an interesting blog about gender differences in on-line behavior: http://www.brazencareerist.com/2009/04/27/a-comparison-men-vs-womens-online-behavior
Good post and comments. I would say that it’ll be a matter of time and Darwinsm. From what I can tell our company I think encourages social media and it’s been great. Better communication has sprung from it.
Quick question, how do you think HR, recruiting, and social media will effect each other in the near future?
@Cade I do believe in Darwinism. Also — I’m speaking at the social recruiting summit and we’ll be talking about your question. http://socialrecruitingsummit.com
@HRPuf I dunno. In high school, I did a report on Shakespeare. Doesn’t make me an expert.
We are actually modifying our current policies to address the social networking sites. Our company deals with sensitive medical information and confidentiality is oh so important. Some of our employees may not use the best judgement when discussing a rough day on their facebook account, or the details can spill out over time creating a confidentiality problem.