Recruiters talk a lot about how to use social media/social networking to step up your recruiting game. Let me ask you a question though - for the HR or recruiting pro who also does more than talent acquisition – let’s say for you generalists or business partners who dabble in employee relations… what happens once you recruit someone via social networking and you’ve got them in the door? Your candidates-turned-employees were on some kind of social networking site when you found them and today, as they sit 20 feet down the hall from you in their nice, little cubicle, they are still online. They are still on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, and/or Twitter. And guess what? They’re on these sites during the day – during work hours. Does this freak you out at all? And is it freaking your managers out?
We’re more connected than ever with one another. And this is a good thing. Your employees are collaborating and building stronger bonds with each other in part because of social networks. Engaged Employees have friends and strong relationships at work – and believe it or not, FB and other social networks are helping to solve the engagement puzzle. Even if you don’t have an employer group or network set up on FB, I guarantee your staff have still found each other and are friends on FB. Take me, for example – of my 179 friends on FB, 29 of them are work colleagues. And I’m a FB novice - the average Facebook user has 281 friends… imagine what their colleagues-as-friends stats are like.
But, here’s the flip side of the issue – we can, and we do, track each other online. And this can cause some problems. A few examples:
–A manager hears about their employee’s “status update” on FB from someone who is friends with them on FB. Their status update says something disgruntled, and they updated it during work hours. The manager wants the employee to remove or change their status update.
–A colleague notices that another colleague makes a lot of updates or posts a lot on FB during work hours… and they know this because of the date/time stamp on FB’s news feeds. “Why are they spending so much time online, during work hours?” they ask. And should this be raised in their performance review?
In both of these scenarios, it was a gen X or baby boomer who raised the issue about a millennial. This shouldn’t be surprising to you – after all, you’re a savvy, upscale HR pro and know that millennials don’t distinguish between work and play during the day – the lines are blurred. They are the ultimate multitaskers and have become adept at switching seamlessly between professional and personal throughout the day or night. In these two situations I share, they weren’t saying anything disparaging, nor confidential on FB. So the magical answer to both of the questions raised? A big fat N-O. No, you shouldn’t make the employee change their status update. No, don’t raise FB usage in their performance review.
HR and IT pros both have struggled with the question of whether to allow access to or the use of social networks in the workplace. Let’s come up with a policy and regulate use or ban it! But I’d argue that this isn’t the appropriate response. More rules and policies won’t fix the problem. And that is, if you consider this even being a problem. Are they getting the job done? If yes, well then…
Besides, to recruit using social networks and then try to ban or reprimand the use of such during work hours? Well, that would make you a bit of a hypocrite. But hey, that’s just my point of view and I’m a millennial, after all, so maybe my perspective is colored. You tell me what you think though and while you’re doing that, I’ll be over on FB checking to see what my friends are up to on the live feed.
This partly hinges on whether or not the person in question is or is not fulfilling his or her duties with respect to the job. Also, whether a person is disgruntled and posts it on FB or makes a comment at the water cooler to other employees makes no difference. The medium makes no difference. I liken it to holding a paper company responsible for the content of a book or blaming a book store for selling a book about something people find offensive. If A) the employee is getting his or her job done properly, and B) the employee isn’t bad-mouthing the firm or colleagues either on line or somewhere else, then whether or not he or she is updating FB or LI at 2:32 PM should make no difference. Key term is “should.” Some organizations and also managers involve themselves with means and activities and not outcomes: bad formula. Unless of course, said person is not meeting expectations. $.02
Jessica:
I have a couple of questions for you since you are a millinial and I am a boomer.
You make the statement that millinials don’t distinguish between work and play. I am sure that applies to you and you probably work at night on your own time. But do all millinials? Or is the night time just for play?
Are you an exempt level employee? If so that makes letting you do both at the office easier, especially if you are performing work at home and you are getting that work done. But for a non-exempt millinial the situation becomes different. By law I have to pay them for their time. That is what is tracked, and if they do not get their work done within the 40 hour workweek then I have to, by law, pay them extra for the time spent over that 40 hours. In that case letting an hourly millinial spend time on Facebook, or any other social networking site, becomes a sticking point for many managers and business owners regardless of how they may have been recruited.
If all millinials do indeed mix work and play all the time then how would you change the FLSA to help businesses deal with overtime? Since we allow the mix of play and work, should we eliminate overtime for millinials? If not, why not?
Look forward to your answers. We “old folk” want to know.
Mike
What many millenials fail to realize is THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO DO! Especially in this economy, the key to staying employed is staying productive. If the performance measure is X, then staying employed means giving X+1 (or more).
I hate to sound like the crotchity old HR guy (still four months left in my 30′s) but the truth is that the 20-somethings have never been through a bad economy. When it comes time to reward the performers (which may simply mean they don’t get laid off), then those who were simply “meeting expectations” will be in deep kimchi.
Perception is everything, especially when the company is stressed financially. When a manager sees an employee “playing” on Facebook or twittering the afternoon away, then that that guy becomes the dead man walking.
mike – you raise some legitimate, practical questions. i hesitate to make sweeping statements about any generation, yet i did in this post to make a point that that how millennials and gen y work is a bit different. but there are no absolutes… i don’t consider myself a classic millennial, based on how the media has labeled me… but i digress.
me? i am an exempt level employee and admittedly, i recruit and hire almost all exempt level folks and have for a while. i hadn’t stopped to think about the implications for non-exempt staff. but for non-exempt staff who might be “playing” on facebook during the day, and for a manager or business owner who might be concerned with that activity, or conversely, them doing some work at night – here’s the reality… to make a status update, to post on someone’s wall via FB takes minutes. seconds. you can do it via the web, via your cell phone or smart phone. i can and have done it while walking from my office and to a conference room to a meeting. i would liken usage of social media at work a negligible personal activities that we all do during the day – calling the vet, calling your child’s school. if it gets out of control, just like any other personal activity one might be engaged in during the day, then you have a performance issue on your hands, right? and that should be addressed. facebook has the potential to get out of control – i don’t deny that – but if someone is so immersed and spending *all* their time on social networks, they are likely disengaged and perhaps greater intervention is needed to address the bigger picture of disengagement and poor performance. and that’s something that should be dealt with on a one-on-one basis.
and nope, i don’t think we could across the board eliminate OT for millennials but to address that millennial doing work at night – if there’s a concern about whether one should be compensated for their time doing this and they are eligible for OT, then i think the burden falls on a manager to make clear what is expected of the millennial employee in terms of when/how they need to complete it… clear boundaries and expectations.
did i cover that? others want to chime in?
HR & Social Media
Social media is going to be a big player in both recruiting and employee communications in the near future and HR pros need to get up to speed with these tools.
I think Jessica has it exactly right. Very few employees of any generation can account for every 30 second interval of their workday. The trouble for observers who are not active participants in social media is that participation in those media is documented, readily visible. That visibility artificially inflates the time you imagine being spent on them.
Everyone frequently needs a moment or two of downtime between tasks. But no one documents smoke breaks or an extra trip to the water cooler or a minute spent trimming your nails.
In many ways, social media can be a much more constructive activity than any of those. By reconnecting, even for a moment, with the friends and colleagues your employees turn to as their support structure, they tap a resource that can do more for morale than any doughnut or cigarette.
You’ll get happier, more engaged employees when you concentrate on their results more than the minutiae of how each moment is spent.
thanks for the conversation that’s taking place here. i just realized – my comment above was for mike haberman.
Nice blog..food for thought! I’m with Todd, I think companies who get bogged down in what their employees are doing each minute of the day give themselves a headache. It’s easier to make sure you connect with your employees, encourage them and make them want to do a good job. Then set goals – those who are achieving are clearly putting in the time and effort, regardless of whether or not they are on FB or Twitter. The ones underachieving might well be getting distracted – those are the ones to look at.
As a Gen-X manager of a company with 7 employees, I encourage them to use social media. Jessica’s points about performance are spot on–what matters is that the work gets done. But part of getting work in the door for us to do is having the world know we exist, and provide the services we do.
Blogging, twittering, teaching, helping people on mailing lists and IRC, these are all marketing activities. If I were to clamp down on this activity, I’d be shooting myself in the foot!
Today, social media (along with search) are fast replacing the yellow pages as the place people go to find help. Businesses that fail to realize this are missing out on the best possible marketing team they have–their own employees.
thanks for swinging by, folks, and for your comments. someone left me an interesting note over on twitter about this post and she said that she, and her fellow Baby Boomers will never “get it” because they see how much lost productivity they have from social networking during the workday. that’s one way to look at it… food for thought and it makes me think about how/whether we work differently, process info different, etc…
As a member of that often misunderstood “Gen Y” population, I know I am fortunate enough to work for a company that reaps the benefit of social networking, micro blogging and really “gets it” when it comes to Web 2.0 technologies. Our metrics shows that our employees are not only are be spending a designated portion of their day on these sites, but MUST spend time sourcing and networking with others in the recruiting/HR industry on these sites (or tools, dependant on how you look at it).
Regardless of generation, like others above have mentioned – it’s easy to become distracted during the day with private matters. It’s important to break down daily hours and know when it’s appropriate to squeeze in a status update and when other work takes precedence. If an employee is losing productivity and it’s obvious that their 50+ daily status updates isn’t increasing production, this persons work ethic should be evaluated, not their access to social media.
Bottom line is; yes, a witty book once said the world is flat, but it really is! You’re either with it or you’re not and either way you’ll almost certainly survive. With that said: protesting or stripping access to Web 2.0 is probably not in favor of either your employees or company if your employees can become strategic with technology and find the medium between personal usage and professional benefits.
All good comments but it made me think that this is somewhat of an artificial poll. Everyone here claims that this makes them productive because the connect to people they need to connect to get the work done. But what if you have an employee who does not need to connect with anyone? In fact the connection is detrimental to their productivity. They spend time chatting with friends about “nothing.” They can just get away with it because it looks like work. We probably would not tolerate it if that connection was on the phone. In fact “back in the days” companies had policies prohibiting personal use of business phones and some even provided pay phones for personal use. (I know, I can here some of you saying “what the hell is a pay phone?” Look it up on wikipedia.)
Now, even though I am a boomer, I get Web 2.0 and connectivity, etc. So I am not arguing against it. But you Gen Y’rs need to see both sides of the story. It is not just a matter of getting with it. Much of business is still run by Boomers and they are the ones making decisions on who stays and who goes. And if you are not perceived as being productive you may go.
Jessica, I agree with you that we are ‘connected’ more than ever before. And I say the following in jest . . . but don’t all young people like to party? I remember planning constant parties through high school, planning more parties to party while in the Marines (more like missing partying as we weren’t on ‘home base’ much), and during 20s, I shifted my partying from every day to mostly weekends (outside of the ocassional Wed/Thurs night in which I could function off of 3 hrs sleep the next day!) Today, at 33, of course I still like to party (although the definition has changed), while I find myself shaking my head recalling the stupid things I did in the name of ‘partying’ years ago
So, what I’m saying is . . . that all young people like to party and have fun. Trust me it’s not a Gen-Y or Millenial thing. My Dad was a Boomer during the Vietman War, and let me tell you, they did partying that us Gen-X’ers and Y’ers could only dream about!
So what I sit here asking myself is simple: If every other generation planned parties when they had breaks (like for lunch, etc.), is that so bad?
P.S. I agree that work/life lines are certainly more blurred because we’re connected 24/7 today (as opposed to back in the day when you actually left work instead of living it the way we do today)
Kristen D: The author of the book you’re referring to is Thomas Friedman, the book is titled, “The World is Flat”, and the premise is about the further decentralizing (‘flattening’) of the Global Economy. It’s about commerce and emerging economies, etc., not about Social Media.
I understand your analogy, but just wanted to toss out there that while human beings have an innate desire to connect ‘better’ or on deeper levels (therefore the meteoric growth of Twitter, FB, etc.), “The World is Flat” focuses on the Global Economy.
I think we can all agree that many of the HR laws that currently exist, especially here in California, are very constraining and somewhat antiquated. They are primarily meant for the industrial era of the 50′s and 60′s where time measured productivity/how many widgets an employee could produce. Today though, time is no longer directly associated with production or work.
I believe we really have to get beyond this idea that employees need to be at to their desks from 9 to 5, and instead really embrace the idea that personal and professional lives have begun to blend (especially for Gen Y workers). Banning social media or preventing employees from updating their status I think smacks of this old style of management. We have to get beyond the idea that checking personal email, looking up sports scores, or updating status on facebook affects a professional’s job (within reason of course). We need to focus on results, and to put this theory into practice I would like to suggest the idea of a Results Only Work Environment or ROWE. It has been implemented at Best Buy where the program has reduced turnover and increased productivity. The creators realized that too often employees are judged on time in the office and not results. As such, they threw out schedules, made meetings optional, and had managers promote employees solely on their results. Therefore, employees could choose when they wanted to come into work, and ironically they found that people actually worked longer hours. In fact the program has been so successful that it is being rolled out across Best Buy, even to their hourly workers.