Social Media; HR; Workplace Mediation

A Social HR conference hosted by CIPD in Manchester #socialmediamcr day raised wide ranging whilst deeply thought provoking issues about the role of social media in the work place. Do you ban it altogether? If you do you can be sure that no “loose cannon” will

1. Damage your brand
2. Upset your customers
3. Libel someone
4. Discriminate against someone
5. Upset another employee
6. Spread negativity throughout the workforce

But can you? What about the conversations in the staff room, or around the water cooler? Telephone conversations? Emails? Private meetings? Conversations in the pub after work? The potential catastrophes that may cause sleepless nights might be happening whilst you are blissfully unaware? Surprises are rarely nice is business and these “nasties” are just the kind of surprise that could be thrown up by say an annual appraisal or client review meeting. Two questions are raised

1. If such catastrophic events are happening around you is it not better to know as they are happening, when there is time to something about it, not months after the wounds have festered.
2. How likely are such events anyway? Is the culture in your business so bad? Are you actually worrying unnecessarily, perhaps responding to the various doom merchants who litter your inbox daily?

If it is about brand, and the culture behind the brand, there is a powerful case for empowering your people to deliver a living, breathing brand , rather than straight jacketing them to deliver something leaden and static by the means of rules.   So, if everyone in your business is aligned to its goals , through training, training which in itself can be delivered and monitored through social media platforms, is it not possible that a permissive attitude to social media in the work place might mean that your people, your cannons, or rather your advocates might , through social media

1. Promote and help improve and develop your brand by being an integral part of it
2. Delight your customers, existing and prospective
3. Vindicate a deserving person
4. Champion someone with a disability
5. Mentor a fellow employee
6. Spread positivity throughout the workforce

It seems to Marcia Mediation in Business that there is something both evolutionary and hence revolutionary about the power of social media. Wouldn’t it be a shame not to embrace it? For more information call Michael Lister 0161 425 3940