Corporate Social Networking: What Is Role Of HR & Learning?

» Posted by Jeanne Meister  » Posted on 07.07.09

It’s no surprise that corporations have a love/hate relationship with the use of social media inside the company. As Business Week reminds us in recent article, there is reason for the tension inside companies on how they should handle usage of social media.

On the one hand, Millennials have social networking in their DNA, and are saying,”I need these tools to be productive.” But the legal folks, and yes, some HR folks, are saying, “This could implode, remember the dark side of using social media and be aware of the experience of Domino’s Pizza“. For those unaware of the Domino’s Pizza fiasco, two former Domino’s Pizza employees used YouTube to create a fictional video account of unsanitary conditions in a Dominos pizza kitchen in Conover, N.C. The story became front-page news on the NY Times.

One solution: Create social media guidelines and be sure all employees understand how to follow them.
IBM’s social computing guidelines are very informative and they have since grown to cover social media usage on sites like Twitter and Facebook as well as inside the company network. Essentially these guidelines urge employees to be open and transparent, to remember they are personally responsible for what they publish, and perhaps most importantly, to take a deep breath and think about what they are doing before hitting the send button.

See the complete IBM Social Computing Guidelines here.

Once you have developed a strategy and a set of guidelines, your next question: How Can Social Networking Be Used for HR and Corporate Learning?

In the July issue of T&D magazine, in an article entitled Social Networking: A Force For Development, a number of concrete uses for social media were outlined:

• Link learners before and after a formal training event
• Engage Millennials—Perhaps as reverse mentors to senior executives
• Provide new content prior to a face to face class
• Provide links and resources to new content
• Determine future training needs by searching tags and reading conversations
• Reinforce and sustain learning try using twitter for this

Additionally, you can read a detailed post I wrote about ways to specifically use Twitter for learning & development here.
What are you doing about developing a social media strategy?
Technorati Tags: Social media, corporate social networks, corporate learning, Human Resources, IBM, Business Week

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