Social Media And Workplace Evolution

While social media has held the public’s collective fascination for some time, its emerging use within workplaces and organisations is a relatively new phenomenon.

As such, quite a few senior managers and decision-makers are worried that the importation of these platforms may also invite unwanted employee behaviours like procrastination, time-wasting, and inappropriate communications. In reality, I don’t believe that any trepidation is warranted. With the transparency of social media spaces enabling everyone to see what everyone else is doing, employees will hardly feel encouraged to act unprofessionally and push the boundaries of social conduct. Our research also shows that there’s very little non-work-related communication going on in these spaces – only about 10% - which I would actually class as normal, healthy, water cooler-type conversations.

More importantly, the use of social media in the workplace can offer huge advantages. Indeed, a study we’ve done with Deloitte Australia (read the full report) shows that it’s an effective means for creating awareness of what’s going on in other spaces of the organisation. It can also be utilised for crowd sourcing ideas and knowledge sharing, and also offers new graduates the opportunity to quickly learn what’s going on within the company. Innovation, productivity, problem solving, information sourcing and employee engagement are also key areas that can benefit enormously from the application of social media platforms.

Rather than attempting to prevent its use (which I don’t think is possible), managers and executives need to embrace the concept. They should become involved and lead from the top. With the use of social media tools being very hard to prescribe, they should instead be open to exploring the possibilities. They should encourage their people to experiment with it and see what transpires. I wouldn’t mind betting they’ll be amazed by what emerges.

Author: Kai Riemer – Senior Lecturer – University of Sydney Business School
Follow Kai on twitter @karisyd

How Social Media Is Impacting Recruitment

It’s no secret that social media is already having a significant impact on recruitment and recruitment processes.

Indeed, with tools like LinkedIn and Facebook facilitating the creation of online communities, the ability to network with people and the ease of transparency in regards to a candidate’s previous skills and experiences, key questions for the future really hinge on the extent to which that impact is influencing and challenging organisational policy. It’s these very areas that will form the basis of a new three-year, ARC-funded project.

As part of the initiative we'll be examining the practices of organisations as they manage their recruitment processes in the context of new social media options such as LinkedIn and Facebook in order to source talent for specific projects. We’ll also examine how businesses can stay connected to potential talent via social media without spamming them to the extent that they lose interest. Furthermore, we’ll attempt to ascertain the in-house recruitment structures that best capitalise on available social media tools. We’ll also be looking at how the use of these tools is impacting the recruitment industry itself. For example, is the nature of the industry itself changing? Or are recruiters embracing the technology and merely using it to complement their current activities?

The emerging issue of employee and employer brand alignment will also be a key focus of the study. With an employee’s social media presence having potential implications for how their employer is perceived, it’s no surprise that the merging of marketing and HR is becoming a greater priority for companies trying to grapple with key questions like: what are you allowed to say on Twitter and Facebook? What’s appropriate? What’s not appropriate? Must the online thoughts and allegiances of the individual match those of the company?

Author: Dr Kristine Dery – senior lecturer – University of Sydney Business School

Image source: Mashable Business - How Employers Really Feel About Social Media

Creating The Perfect Media Message

Delivering your message via the media is the quickest, most effective way of shaping stakeholder opinion on a large scale.

Yet optimising media opportunities and communicating in a way that ensures strong audience engagement is something that many people struggle with. Crucially, the principles underpinning good communication remain the same whether you’re interacting with traditional media (such as newspapers, radio, TV and magazines), or new media (such as Facebook, Twitter or Internet blogs). With this in mind, there are several key rules that must be observed.

• Identify your target audience. Too many people make the mistake of approaching a communications task by first determining what they want to say and how they want to say it without any concern for how it might be received by the audience. 
• Adjust your delivery style to accommodate your intended audience. Ask yourself: Who are they? What is it that is relevant to them? What is it that’s most likely to engage them? Your subsequent communication must be relevant and engaging and written in a way that is easily understood.
• Encapsulate your key message or story at the very beginning of your communication - then produce the evidence, background and facts to support that story. In essence, this is the opposite approach to producing an academic work or report.
• Develop your communication around stories about people. This will enable to you to instantly connect with your audience. You might be writing about a particular piece of research, but the focus should be on its implications for real people.
• Be aware of the word length framework you have to work with and adhere to it diligently. This may range from 140 characters (the Twitter limit), to 700 words for a newspaper opinion piece, or even 3000 words for a major feature. While writing to short word limits is difficult, it’s important to remember that there isn’t a single story in the world that can’t be told in a single sentence.

Author: Trevor Watson – Director of Media – University of Sydney Business School

A Small Price For Huge Benefits

Imagine a specialist application capable of running on a $30 tablet that could help women in Asian and indigenous communities develop and grow their own businesses.

Far from being some kind of technological pipe dream, it’s a concept we proposed at a special workshop as part of Sydney’s VIVID Ideas Exchange last Wednesday night. Intended to be a very simple, highly interactive application targeted at people who will never go to university but will go on to run micro or very small enterprises, this innovation will also complement some of the Business School’s current teaching initiatives, like the Building Female Entrepreneurial Skills for SME in ASEAN Countries and the Remote and Rural Enterprise Program (RARE).

But the potential uses for this easy-to-use application go far beyond educational support. It could also be a kind of e-reference book or a tool that enables the user to access particular case studies or best practice examples. The user will be able to practice simple exercises and learn the implications of particular business strategies in a very visual, experiential manner. Behind the simple graphical interface, the application will be capable of recalling daily sales data or weekly business expenditure. Strongly linked to our learning by doing, enquiry-based learning methodology, this project’s purpose and focus is on visual, tactile, interactive learning – where the learner is encouraged to think and explore answers through leading questions.

Clearly, the development of such an app represents a significant challenge, and our aim is to undertake the hard yards in conjunction with IT software development and creative experts, as well as a student cohort from Freie Universität Berlin. With this in mind, I’ll be heading to Germany shortly with the sole purpose of scoping out the challenges for the next year or two.

Author: Richard Seymour - Innovation and Enterprise Program Director