HR is about people and communication.

What is a business about?  People and communication.

Here we are in 2020 and there has been major changes in the world of business.  Social Media, the internet and mobile has changed the way we do business, from selling and marketing to human resources, procurement, customer services.

What is social media about?  People and communication.

Can you see a pattern forming here?

Social media is a frictionless way for us to communicate with other people.  But what does this mean practically for the HR professional?  Surly social media is posting cat photos and arguing with your friends about politics?  Did you know you can use social to strategically run your business?

There are many issues in the workforce such as ...

How do we get our teams to work together in a frictionless way?

How do we increase the employee experience?  How do we reduce cost at the same time?

How do we support our returners?

How do we support all employees?

How do we get the best talent and before the competition?

How do we retain the talent we have?

How do we get new starters contributing quicker?

How do we get sales people contributing quicker?

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This can all be enhanced using social media.  

If we look at Simon Kemp's Q4 Digital Snapshot 

https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2019-q4-global-digital-statshot

There are 3.75 Billion people in the world active on social media.  Your prospects are on it, your customers are on it, your staff are on it, your alumni are on it and your future employees are on it.

So here's a thing.

Why don't we start using social?  Not tactically, but strategically.  Why don't empower people to use it and use it for our own advantage?

How do I mean?

We can use social to support maternity returners, make them feel welcome and get them contributing quicker.  In fact we can use social to enhance the employee experience across the business, supporting new starters enabling them to contribute faster.  We can also use it to get salespeople to contribute faster.  This, often is a game changer and the business case for this change in business.

Empowering your staff on social will also enable you to get access to the talent faster.  It will probably even reduce the amount you spend on recruiters and job adverts.  It might even make you the employer of choice in your industry.  This again is often a business case, based on the savings.

But emphasizing the employee experience, social is often a driver to help retain employees and impacting on the recruitment process. 

We can use social to unlock the passive candidate and we all know that passive candidates stay longer and are usually higher performers.

Finally we would expect a 25% increase in employee efficiency in using social.  That's 25% more employees for free!  Again, another business case.

In 2020, let's be smart.  Let's start making our people and process more efficient and effective by using social.

Oh, and by the way, there is a crazy (do more for less) business case as well.