In today’s dynamic social scenarios, the unprecedented boom of social media is moulding HR practitioners to seek out a prospect’s social media leanings to understand his personality in its entirety.
From being active on Facebook and Twitter to being prim and proper on LinkedIn and BranchOut, today’s employees are as socially active as fish that take to water. And, even the HR has to be in synchronisation with the changing times, in order to address this emerging employee trend effectively.
So what does this recent social trend mean for businesses?
HR analysts expect the social media-led HR practice to become enormous in coming times, in turn, promising huge opportunities for business to connect with the community. Dynamic businesses are accepting social media as the way forward for communications. They believe that a major factor which determines the hiring these days is the growing influence and reach of social media. After all, social media is the next big thing, where the return on investment is becoming bigger than ever.
Take the example of Zurich Public Transport (VBZ) that has taken social media as a fresh approach to recruitment. It proactively uses e-recruiting and advertises hugely on social media to connect with its target group. The VBZ uses job videos, bold digital campaigns, enthusiastic blogs, and the employee-made hour-long video compilations to show why they are different and what makes it a great place to work at.
Using social media as a laboratory for experimenting with new HR practices, VBZ and a host of other companies are acknowledging that with the advent of web 2.0, the attitude of job seekers and communication habits have changed drastically. Companies see social media channels as an important vista for creating dialogues and engaging communication. They believe that a fresh approach to HR is what sets them apart and delivers greater success.
Today social media allows core HR actions like recruiting and communication dispersal to be successfully accomplished on a much bigger scale along with traditional HR practice methods. On the one hand, social media helps companies to interact with their targeted audience, while on the other it helps create positive brand awareness, engages with requisite candidates and improve the effectiveness of hiring processes.
HR professionals are increasingly leveraging social media as a knowledge-sharing medium. This is achieved by utilising various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs to filter out organisational messaging and improve workflow.
Across the world, HR managers are increasingly utilising social media platforms to tell their business story and enquire about the prospective employees. At the same time, incumbent employees are being fed to the company communication via social media channels, while an increasing number of prospective job seekers view these social media channels as an aspiring medium to connect with the business in question. Making lucid new-world HR strategies, social media is the fulcrum around which the activities of the future will revolve. This creates an all-encompassing environment that is a win-win situation for employers, employees and the prospects.
