working sociallynine ways to set the agenda and leverage social media in the workplacetodd wheatland and david fenech

24%% who think it’s acceptable to use social media to communicate with friends/colleagues about work

43%% who say social media has affected their productivity at work

30%% who use social media in their job searching more than newspapers or online job boards

35%% who communicate by smart phone, worldwide

47%% who worry that use of social media at work, for personal reasons, will lead to problems

% of companies who use social media to recruit, depending on the region

75-90%

We surveyed 168,000 people in in 30 countries about their use of social media in the workplace.the social Barometer

when it comes to social media, think direction, not control

3 | working socially

Two worlds have collided: the personal and

the professional. The widespread use of

social media by the general public is on a

permanent trajectory, and it has streamed

into the professional workplace. Use of

social media across an individual’s personal

networks is now competing with formal,

business-oriented social communications

on company-branded properties. Not

only is there concern for the proper use of

employees’ time while at work, but also for

their possible conflicting and competing

messaging within the same channels.

Simply put, within the social space, informal

conversations are bumping into formal ones.

The emerging generation of workers,

Generation Y (born between 1982 and 1995),

has grown up with browsers and portable

technology accessible day and night. From

internet forums and blogs to social networks of

every stripe, the latest wave of workers sees no

need to leave tools or communication habits

at home. Not surprisingly, the established

cadre of workers, Generation X (born between

1964 and 1981) and the Baby Boomers (born

between 1946 and 1963), are slower to accept

the personal use of social media at work.

That said, this more mature demographic is

now showing the most rapid growth rate.

Many companies began pushing their messages

to customers through social mechanisms

around 2005. Now they realize that social

communication is a way of life in charting

employee-related strategies and protocols.

They have also come to recognize that

broadcast communication can be supported by

or even replaced with social tools, internally or

externally. Even advertising has become a two-

way street, if not a multi-lane, social highway.

After we asked the opinions of nearly 170,000

survey participants in 30 countries, it’s clear

that the presence of social media is

something to manage or direct, not to fear.

Social media started as a primary impetus

behind describing and sharing, online, the

details of daily life. Now social media is

sparking new ways of thinking about work,

doing work, and taking care of customers. For

corporate organizations, the potential of social

media could be viewed as one of the most

useful phenomenon of online innovations.

this brings us to the two obvious risks

in the social–professional mix: worker

distraction and corporate over-reaction.

Users of social media see it as a personal tool

for sharing and communicating. If you try to

remove these tools, many feel their rights

are being infringed upon. Nearly a third of

survey participants believe it’s acceptable

to use social media for personal reasons at

work. On the geographical dimension,

48 percent of Asia-Pacific participants find

it acceptable to do personal socializing

via technology during working hours. Yet

despite the social media rights viewpoint,

47 percent of all participants, across

generations and geography, worry

that the social–professional boundary

when it comes to social media, think direction, not control continued

4 | working socially

crossing might cause problems at work.

And it goes both ways; 56 percent of all

participants believe that access to their

social pages is not their employers’ right.

Many companies continue to view social

media as something they must regulate. A

more pragmatic viewpoint suggests another

path: the use of social media in the workplace

is best considered in terms of responsibility

– neither a right nor a cause for restriction.

Corporate leaders have three options. They

can let the collision follow an unguided course.

They can look at it as a problem and implement

aggressive blockades to tackle it. Or there’s

the third alternative, our preference. Says

Kelly CEO Carl Camden, “By establishing basic

guard-rails around social media, companies

can dramatically accelerate the speed at which

their teams can safely operate … helping them

respond to the market faster than ever before.”

Embracing the concept of a social business

and constructing it requires strategic

attention. The process is a matter of

degree – the difference between setting

direction and resorting to command and

control, the process of converging personal

rights and management responsibility.

Smart companies are putting social media to

use, not fighting it – because it’s a powerful

way to connect with people inside the company

and to connect with external stakeholders.

Besides, even if you prevent social media use

on company equipment, your employees will

connect through their own tools like personal

smartphones. However, to counter social

media’s strong power to distract, companies

must set the tone by proactively developing

and implementing social policies, strategies

and their supporting tactics. Also, to stand

any chance of success, these initiatives must

directly relate to the organization’s business

strategies and must be fully supported and

funded by the executive leadership team.

It would be easy to conclude that using social

media at work is more popular with younger

workers or workers in emerging economies

because they “get” smart technology or

because mobile tools are the only resources

they have for communication. But every year,

the use of smart technology and visits to social

media sites are growing exponentially among

Baby Boomers. So why do we have such a big

divide when it comes to opinions about using

social media at work?

The digital divide in the workplace pertains not

only to the adoption of social media and smart

technology but also to the norms around what

people consider appropriate working behavior.

This is an experience gap, and employers can

close it by setting priorities and establishing

processes that clarify what is the appropriate

5 | working socially

#1 / find common ground

use of social media in their individual work

environments.

By fostering work experiences – on projects

and in targeted customer relationships – that

incorporate a role for social media and establish

the parameters, companies can set a foundation

for the wise, productive use of social media on

terms that satisfy management and workers of

all backgrounds. As workers witness the impact

of their influence on the company’s use of

social media, and as they see in front of them

concrete examples of professionalism, their

social energy will shift to more professional

pursuits while they’re at work. A balance can

be found with the younger worker sharing

their knowledge of social media and the more

mature worker sharing their knowledge of

professional and appropriate communication.

Combining both can lead to a powerful

advantage for an organization. It’s wise to avoid

the classic mistake of employing younger, green

employees to manage corporate communities

without the overseeing eye of an employee

wise in the art of professional communication.

To begin putting social media use in the context

of workplace experience, companies can take

five actions.

1 manage the initial disruption. Establish

a social media-use policy to protect both

employees and the corporate brand from

issues ranging from simple embarrassment to

disruptive legal actions.

2 involve employees of all experience

levels in a review of company ethics

and performance standards. Guide

employees in exploring how social media

can serve existing standards, rather then

threatening them.

3 directly align the social strategy with

business objectives. This provides for a

stronger, longer-term strategy and helps

prevent organizations from becoming too

socially tactical and prevents the urge to

chase every new social item on the horizon.

4 participate on social networks with a

branded presence and integrate social

networks into branded web sites. These

efforts should directly support the corporate

objectives (i.e. serve the company’s sales,

marketing, customer service, recruiting and

media strategies).

5 empower employees to share relevant

company content within their networks.

Define a simple process that allows people

to engage.

6 | working socially

Indicating social media progress, only

12 percent of survey participants said

their companies still ban the use of social

media outright.

When a company stops looking at the

social–professional collision as war, it signals

its acknowledgement of the fact that social

media is not only here to stay but can be a

strong asset. With the elimination of the

war context, changing internal nomenclature

from “arsenal” to “toolkit”, companies can

explore the uses of social media in real time,

demonstrating that while they may still be

learning how to fully leverage social tools,

#2 / Build a toolkit

they’re not just waiting it out or hoping it

goes away.

Successful companies make the social

media policy the heart of the toolkit,

establishing general use guidelines and

standards. The best policies link directly to

business strategy and organization culture,

emphasizing what employees can do, not

just what they cannot. Strong policies

are inclusive and leverage employees as

advocates, thereby allowing the company

to scale social tactics across their employees’

social networks.

In these early years of social media

policy-setting, 10 best practices

have emerged:

1 address the real-time nature of

communicating

2 Consider the abundance of channels

available

3 Articulate how specific social media

channels support the company’s business

and strengthen customer and community

relationships

4 Clarify the parameters for using company

equipment and social media accounts (while

being aware of and not violating freedom of

speech and labor laws)

5 Explain good sense and sharing examples

of industry and corporate best practices

6 State both the risk and rewards of specific

behaviors

7 update the policy regularly and

communicate those updates

8 Clarify that employees have a stake in the

success of the policy by setting guidelines

for how employees can listen and respond

to company activity on social networks

9 Give examples of positive and negative use

of social media

Be prepared for what will go publically

wrong. Think social triage.

10

7 | working socially

#3 / set Boundaries

Boundaries between companies, their

employees, suppliers and customers will

continue to blur. At the same time, hierarchies

are flattening, so employees are taking a

bigger role in organizing themselves into cross-

functional teams.

In managing these shifts, companies are

equipping employees to access corporate

knowledge and experience in a self-directed

manner. However, companies should expect

employees to turn to each other informally

and to external online sources both to educate

themselves and to share their opinions. All

generations value having unencumbered access

to information, colleagues and friends.

With nearly half of all survey participants

expressing concern about mixing personal

and professional social media contacts and

channels, it’s clear that the desire for boundaries

is not the issue; it’s how to set them.

There’s nothing better for dealing with shifting

boundaries than to create new ones. But in

the socially connected workplace, the

boundaries must be fluid and used to empower

employees, not limit them. Begin by setting

expectations and then get down to specifics.

Here are a few examples.

1 with rights come responsibilities. If you

want this, then you are responsible for that.

2 when you share anything that falls outside

of the defined scope of appropriate

information sharing (as explained in the

social media policy), you can expect a

reaction that may include employment

termination.

3 company equipment is for company

activity and therefore can be monitored.

Assume that’s the case.

4 personality is fine; getting personal is not.

5 here is what we – managers and

employees – consider “too much

information”. (Provide pertinent and

specific examples)

In the socially connected workplace, the boundaries must be fluid and used to empower employees, not limit them

8 | working socially

#4 / capitalize on cultural differences

Geographic location clearly bears on the way

company cultures absorb social media activity.

In the Asia Pacific, workers are three times more

likely than in the Americas to approve of the

personal use of social media at work – yet they

don’t want or expect surveillance. Workers in

other parts of the world may use social media

at work, and they would be surprised if their

companies didn’t take a peek.

Companies that hire only in their resident

countries may believe they are immune

from the impact of findings like these, but

the fact is, large migrant populations are

entering workforces far from their native lands

– bringing cultural habits, including their use

and perceptions of social media, with them.

Apart from studying and benchmarking cultural

practices, companies can do three things to

capitalize on cultural differences.

1 use the fact that many non-native

workers are comfortable accessing and

sharing information, so they can provide

rich experiential data about social media

channels and habits.

2 visa requirements set high standards for

skill, experience and even education levels.

Combined with the fact that these workers

are digital natives, recognize that they could

share valuable best practices for managing

time and relationships via digital means.

3 the non-native worker’s state of

connectedness means they’re

connected to their native markets. This

knowledge and these relationships have

inherent value to employers seeking to

understand multicultural markets – as well

as expanding globally.

In the Asia Pacific, workers are three times more likely than in the Americas to approve personal use of social media at work—yet they don’t want or expect surveillance

9 | working socially

#5 / invigorate your training

Companies continue to make significant

investments in professional development and

training. For many of these organizations,

it is the equivalent of military boot camp,

acculturating employees into “the company

way” – from product development to customer

service methodology.

As a burgeoning element of corporate culture

now worthy of policy and strategic attention,

social media has a place in the corporate

training manual too – not only as a subject,

but as a teaching channel. Companies need to

find the middle ground between a boot camp

mentality and a college campus style of training.

Learning via social media – social learning –

should never replace the practice of workers

learning from each other. It should, in fact,

enhance it. For at least the next two decades,

social learning methods will level the playing

field between workers of different experience

levels. Experienced workers may share

company, customer and industry knowledge

with new staff, and new staff will demonstrate

the real-time capacity of using social media to

exchange ideas, communicate with customers

and capture industry practices from anywhere

in the world.

By eliminating physical and temporal

constraints, learning via social media can help

companies concentrate worker learning on

expertise and data, and possibly move away

from legacy modes of learning based on

top-down decision-making. The result will be

highly skilled workers with access to each other,

producing innovative solutions that increase the

company’s value to all its stakeholders.

A quality training course would include the

following basic elements:

1 stay current – with constant changes in

social media a corporation’s training will

quickly become dated.

2 use examples – the use of overarching

examples can provide guidance with

more longevity.

3 leverage what’s already available – many

social networks provide in-depth help.

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

4 global corporations need training that

includes the diverse social channels they’ll

use around the world.

Learning via social media should never replace the practice of workers learning from each other. It should, in fact, enhance it

10 | working socially

#6 / dig a productivity channel

In a perfect world, the corporate use of social

media fuels effective, timesaving interaction not

just between workers but between the company

and its suppliers, customers and influencers.

Forty-seven percent of the survey participants

worry that their use of social media at work,

for personal reasons, will lead to problems.

Forty-three percent report that social media has

already negatively affected their productivity.

Getting workers to manage their personal time

with social media to minimize distraction at

work requires giving them a reason to use social

media for productivity. This is the bridge to

the state of transformation that will benefit the

company as well the workers.

1 identify workers at every level – executives,

managers, staff – who are using social media

correctly. Give them a company platform that

enables them to set an example.

2 ask these workers to share their tips for

using social media at work, including how to

manage their personal time.

3 look for ways to improve work processes

through social media, especially as they

relate to internal knowledge sharing, sales

and customer relations.

4 use analytics to capture how social media

is helping the company improve. Share the

data.

5 reinforce the positive intersection of

personal and professional use of social

media. They are not diametrically opposed;

they just need to be intelligently and

proactively directed.

Getting workers to manage their personal time with social media to minimize distraction requires giving them a reason to use social media for productivity

11 | working socially

#7 / recast employees as messengers

People have always discussed their work

with the expectation that the conversation’s

reach would be limited to the recipient or the

recipient’s network if they chose to repeat the

discussion. However, social media makes it very

easy now for one message, however private

or momentary, to be repeated on a very large

scale. Add to this the indexing and search

ability of the message and it takes on an entire

life of its own.

Nearly a quarter of survey participants report

that they think it is acceptable to use social

media to communicate with friends and

colleagues about work. The fact is, employees

are now company messengers. And even for

the employees who confine their personal use

of social media to non-work hours, if they’re

talking about work, they are, to some extent,

representing the company. Employees are no

longer just assets, they comprise a primary

conduit to the marketplace.

It’s time to equip employees for the brand

ambassador role.

1 think about the employee persona that

depicts the company’s culture, product and

services authentically, compelling interest

and loyalty from customers and other

employees. Give this persona a voice by

giving employees content they can use in

describing the company and their roles in it.

2 consider ways to enable employees to

vent with each other within the company’s

own walls so that they don’t feel the need to

do it via public channels.

3 create new mechanisms for employees to

create and share company content. It will

differentiate you in the marketplace

4 connect employees to current company

thought leaders, and put their own thought

leadership in the spotlight.

5 Back up the company’s own socially-

based interaction with employees with

offline activities that are already a part of the

company’s culture.

6 remind workers that every encounter is

an opportunity to connect – make it a

positive connection.

7 above all, remind employees to listen first

and then talk only when they have engaging

and relevant content to share. Nobody

likes a person who constantly talks about

themselves without regard to the ongoing

conversation; the same holds true on

social media.

Employees are no longer just assets, they comprise a primary conduit to the marketplace

12 | working socially

#8 / expand your triBe

It’s no surprise that within business strategy

discussions there is some contradictory dialogue

about the use of social media. While people

are moving increasingly online to look for work,

they don’t like the idea of potential or current

employers studying their social media moves.

Only around one third of survey participants

think a current employer should look at an

employee’s social network pages – or that a

prospective employer should use them to make

a hiring decision. Yet 30 percent of participants

also state they use social media in their job

searching, more than newspapers or even

online job boards.

Somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of

companies use social media to recruit workers.

A company’s social media presence can in fact

be a strong point of differentiation from its

competitors.

Various forms of social media can be used

to showcase the company, search for and

engage with candidates. For forward-looking

companies, these efforts can also be tied to

onboarding and training employees – and

connecting them to one another to extend the

corporate culture to decentralized employees.

Various forms of social media can be used to showcase the company, search for and engage with candidates and screen them

13 | working socially

#9 / feed your customers

Every company wants to be close to its

customers. Until social media knocked on

the enterprise door, companies studied their

customers in the context of the products and

services they were selling. When conducting

research and tests, companies more often than

not put potential and established products in

front of customers to see what they thought.

Now, personal technology has put customers

at least at pace with product and service

innovation, if not ahead of it. So companies

have begun to listen to customers as a way not

just to get close to them, but to help define

products and services – social innovation.

Workers are well aware of the importance

of having a home on the social networks,

and not just for listening to customers but for

taking care of them, too. Workers see their

success tied to that of their companies. They

understand that customers do business online,

so they expect to see companies living there,

beyond transactions alone.

How a social media presence aligns with

the company’s business strategies, cultural

values and customer priorities is important

to workers. More and more, workers see

their companies as communities populated

with suppliers, customers, shareholders and

traditional media.

Alignment with this community is often best

expressed in social media, and workers can

shepherd it along. If companies feed their

customers, they feed their employees, too.

1 Begin with the company’s value

proposition. Use social media to ask

customers, creatively, what they want, need

and expect and where the company adds

value to their lives – not just their wallets and

the specific problem a product or service

addresses. For example, if customers value

sustainable business practices, they will

want to know if the company employs them.

This may not be immediately traceable via

product information or pricing; social media

is an excellent way to share information

about sustainability.

2 ask good questions. Always express the

answers in the customer’s terms.

3 use what employees know – from their

own experiences as customers – to create

hallmarks of the company’s brand.

Companies have begun to listen to customers as a way not just to get close to them, but to help define products and services

exit

This information may not be published, broadcast, sold, or otherwise distributed without prior written permission from the authorized party. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. An Equal Opportunity Employer. © 2013 Kelly Services, Inc.

aBout the authors

TOdd WhEATlAnd, VP Thought leadership. With 15 years experience

in the human resources and workforce consulting space, Todd has overall

responsibility for thought leadership at Kelly Services. he has degrees in

Commerce (Economics/Marketing) from UWA and Communication from

Curtin University. linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/wheatland

Twitter: www.twitter.com/toddwheatland

dAVId FEnECh is the Vice President of Interactive Marketing & Creative

Services at Kelly Services. he has more than 16 years of interactive

marketing experience as well as traditional sales and marketing knowledge

from multiple Fortune-500 organizations. dave’s education includes earning

a Bachelor of Science degree as well as a Master’s in Business Administration

with an emphasis in Marketing and Information Systems.

aBout kelly

Kelly Services, Inc. (nASdAQ: KElYA, KElYB) is a leader in providing workforce solutions. Kelly

offers a comprehensive array of outsourcing and consulting services as well as world-class staffing

on a temporary, temporary-to-hire, and direct-hire basis. Serving clients around the globe, Kelly

provides employment to more than 550,000 employees annually. Revenue in 2011 was $5.6 billion.

Visit www.kellyservices.com and connect with us on Facebook, linkedIn, & Twitter.

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