How to implement a peer-to-peer mentoring program

A 5-step guide on how to embed a peer-to-peer mentoring program within an internal comms dept

Peer mentoring takes place when the mentor isn't in a position of authority over the mentee. For example, an employee in an internal communication department might have a colleague within the same department as their mentor. The mentor will guide their colleague based on the life experience that they have gained and their professional expertise within the communication arena.

Step 1 – Senior management buy in

Ensure buy in from senior management and that the peer-to-peer mentoring program is part of the company’s talent management program. This ensures that the mentoring program fulfils the company’s goals and objectives and isn’t an exercise that's seen by management to be time costly, inefficient and unproductive.

Step 2 - Mentor recruitment

The success of the program relies on the ability of the organisation to recruit appropriate mentors. Each potential mentor should be interviewed against a criteria of desired competencies and required skills. An essential part of the recruitment should include a self assessment from the potential mentor as this indicates their level of self awareness.

There are a number of things that need to be considered when choosing the right peer mentor including the following:

1. Is the proposed mentor already considered a role model within the department/organisation?
2. Is the proposed mentor able to accept constructive criticism and continually learn from the      experiences that the mentor has gone through?
3. Does the proposed mentor have the ability to empower others?
4. Does the proposed mentor have a good work record or one that has improved over time?

Step 3 - Mentor training

All mentors should be trained before they begin this important role. They should not have to rely solely on trial and error to succeed. They should be trained on, for example, essential skills like coaching techniques, how to transfer their knowledge, the need for confidentiality and how to deal with conflict. Mentors should also have their own mentor to ensure that they continue to develop and know how to deal with the issues that may arise with their mentee.

Step 4 – Relationship building

There should be a good match between the mentor and the mentee and they should both agree to the relationship. A good match is when the mentor has a complimentary personality, a good understanding of the behaviours that need to be elicited from the mentee. For example if the mentee is known as a talented but troublesome employee the mentor should have experience in working with this type of employee. The mentor should not have an attitude of superiority and should truly be a role model.

Many companies fail when they enforce a particular mentor onto a mentee or when neither member of the party understands the nature of the relationship or the roles that they're supposed to play. There should be activities that allow the two individuals to get to know each other so that they can build a trusting relationship. For example the mentor and mentee could work together on a communication project as equal peers. This would allow the mentor to subtly demonstrate his expertise in a way that is not domineering to the mentee. The mentee would get to know his mentor without any artificial barriers being set up between them. The company should organize social gatherings activities where the mentors and mentees can mix together and get to know each other in a social background.

The mentor will need to assess the needs of the mentee and explain to the person how they will help the mentee achieve his or her objectives. They should agree a time that they'll meet, and a format of training or discussion that they'll work to. They should also discuss the level of confidentiality that they hold themselves to.

Step 5 – Ending the relationship

It's very important that the mentoring relationship doesn't fade into inactivity over time but has a formal ending. This allows a period of review between the mentor and the mentee, a time to celebrate successes and to plan for the future. The plan should include the activities that the mentee will do to continue their learning. The company should ensure that the experiences of the mentor and mentee are captured for the company’s succession and training plans and the individual’s personal development or training plans.

Peer-to-peer mentoring is an extremely valuable tool for organizations looking for ways to continuously develop their teams, however it's vital to ensure the both the mentor and the mentee receive the appropriate support and guidance if the organization is to reap the long-term benefits of this approach.

I worked with Brand Aspect to implement a small peer to peer mentoring programme amongst the employees. The Managing Director wanted his employees to take on new experiences and responsibilities within a short timescale whilst on the job rather than on training courses. He believed that this would develop his employees quickly and would be more beneficial for them and the business.

He discovered that there was renewed confidence and pride within the team when working outside their comfort zones. They were able to implement their new learning quickly and this learning is embedded and not quickly forgotten.

The Managing Director has more available time for strategy as he was not asked similar questions from the team on a regular basis.  He was able to delegate more and his employees became more able to make key strategic decisions.

Judith Germain

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comment here about mentoring.

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Engaging for Success?

HR gurus such as Gary Hamel at CIPD conferences seem to mouth the word ‘engagement’ more times per minute than Robert Plant used to sing ‘baby’ in the average Led Zeppelin song.  But what exactly does this mean?  Is engagement some kind of secret code for ‘in company dating’ or a causal relationship between casual workers and casual sex?

I've listened long and hard to academics discussing the concept and they seem not to be able to even agree what the definition of the word is.  Of course engagement is all about the 4E’s: getting people excited, empathetic, ecstatic and energetic about the company and what it does.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but what about achieving it? Some people think it is enough to apply the '3 W's of engagement' by posting the word engagement on every Wall, Website and WC in the company, in the vain hope that the repetition will somehow rub off on staff in some Orwellian approach to culture change.   Let’s look at an environment where many people feel engaged naturally.  The pub!

Pubs do NOT have mission statements that say:

“We aim to encourage sociosexual networking and leverage mission critical knowledge, skills and wisdom through the use of addictive depressant substances in a relaxing lifestyle environment that encourages the suppression of societal norms of decency and so on”.

Equally, genuine ‘employers of choice’ such as Google, Innocent and Unilever do NOT have such depressing mantras displayed around the office.  Isn’t there something very odd about that?  To get people engaged with your company, try some of these things:

1. Set your people free to decide how they go about their work but be clear about the demands / end results – smart leaders worry about the destination but provide some scope over the journey.
2. Encourage constructive and destructive deviance in the pursuit of better / quicker ways to do existing things.
3. Encourage spontaneous behaviour by leaving some aspects of work unplanned and unstructured.
4. Where performance matters, insist on proper prior preparation.  Surprisingly, this applies as much to punk rock as it does to people management.  Writing a two and a half minute music hit requires a great deal of discipline as well as tapping into your intuition, as Ian Dury, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones would tell you.

I wrote a micro book called Punk Rock People Management a while back, which aimed to digest all of HR down to a very short volume, based on three principles: Simplicity, Brevity and Authenticity.  The book offers us three chords on engagement:

1. Cut the crap on engagement and get engaged with what counts and what gets counted.
2. Give people discretion on the means of production whilst being precise on the ends of production.
3. Create a vacancy if your people are pretty vacant …

Punk Rock People Management is available free via the link above.  You can also see a set of seminar slides on the subject which we gave as a keynote to an HR Conference recently at Innovation and HR.  No need to pogo or throw a TV out the window at work when you read the book, of course ! :-)

And Martin Couzens made this superb mini video about a Punk Rock approach to HR.  Check it out at PunkHR.

Peter Cook

About the Blogger:  Peter Cook leads The Academy of Rock - Keynote events with a difference and Human Dynamics - Business and organisation development, training and coaching.  Contact via peter@humdyn.co.uk  His latest book "The Music of Business" is available direct or in the usual places.

  

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comment here telling us your take on what engagement is.

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HR & the Joys of Office Politics

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice the blog looks a bit difference.  I’ve taken your feedback on board and have completely redesigned the site to make it more accessible.  It is now easier for you to interact with each respective writer and blog post.  In particular I have introduced a new and easier system for leaving comments, which means you don’t have any lengthy log in times and we receive less spam comments. 

I am also making the blog more welcoming to guest writers.  Gone are the set days or weeks for guest writers; if you want to write a post for the blog you can.  Just follow the guidelines here and I’ll publish your post!

All in all, the blog is a huge improvement... oh and I won’t be writing my (needless) intros anymore – hurrah I hear you call! – Instead you can just get straight into the blog post (Ed Scrivener).

HR & the Joys of Office Politics

I write regular blog posts on one of my blogs about life at work and how to make the most of it.  I write about leadership, management and generally how to manage your career.  One subject that always proves popular is the handling of office politics.  Again in my work as a coach, it is something referred to time and again by clients. Some want to know how to be good at it. But others, and by far the majority, want to know how to deal with what they regard as its damaging effects. 

It is a subject that brings all kinds of responses in people.

Well, in the past, I’ve likened office politics to chess; I don’t play for all kinds of reasons but I do know the rules. And that is the advice I would always give to my clients - you may decide not to ‘play’ but you do need to know how the game works.  And for those in HR department, I think that advice is even more important. 

Office politics is about the acquiring and use of power within an organization. If you are to be effective influencing senior managers and in ensuring, for example, that your policies are embedded, then you do need to understand the politics of the organization. You need to know where the informal lines of influence lie and how office politics works in your village.  If you don’t know that, and you don’t manage your key influencers, then you may find important initiatives fail. For example, that new campaign that was meant to promote fairness and equal opportunity gets shot down in ways you couldn’t have imagined.

Wherever you have a group of people, you will have a degree of politics operating. People will usually jockey for position, form alliances, decide who they do like and who they don’t!  They will come to the group with different personalities, sets of values and opinions. 

A large part of work in HR is about actually protecting people and the organization from the negative effects of groups that have not been well lead in the process of forming. But how can you possibly mount guard if you don’t understand the influence-hierarchy yourself.

 It can be difficult to find out all you need to know, particularly if you are new to an organisation.  And, of course, the hierarchy will change over time, as people strive successfully and unsuccessfully to achieve greater influence. You need to understand the office politics, even if you find the concept distasteful. And, you will be very lucky indeed if someone actually tells you the rules of the game!  

As for me, well I can only say that office politics is one of the reasons why I’m very glad to be out of the corporate world.  Life as a writer and online/phone coach can be lonely at times.  But my word it is often a lot pleasanter than it used to be when I found myself having to sort out the very negative effects of office politics gone wrong.

Wendy Mason

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comment here explaining your experience of office politics and HR’s role in keeping the peace!

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Dealing with difficult people on training courses

Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK. 

Judith Germain previous post about HR networking is followed today by her view on a situation many of us will have been in; delivering a training session when you have to contend with someone being rather trying!  Here’s how Judith deals with those situations.  (Ed Scrivener)

Dealing with difficult people on training courses

A good training course delivers its objectives, is interesting and interactive and allows for the differing learning styles of the attendees. The success of the course will require an effective trainer who can impart their knowledge whilst retaining the attention of the learners. Understanding human behaviour is often a requisite to being able to deliver a course that can exceed the expectations put upon it.

First things first

When you are delivering training it’s important to understand not only what your required outcomes are, but also what the organisational goals are, the prevailing context and what the attendees were told about the course before they arrived. You are more likely to have a higher proportion of difficult people on your course if attendance was mandatory and not seen as necessary by them, and/or an organisational environment where major change is happening (eg redundancy).

Understanding the expectations of the attendees and whether they are likely to be hostile to your training intervention is therefore vital. If this is a possibility then it’s important to design the content of the course accordingly and deal with their potential hostility upfront and immediately that the course starts. A ‘safe’ way to do this is when you ask the attendees what their objectives are for the training course. Our experience shows that at this stage the attendees often articulate any resentment to being on the course and how they feel about the organisation. This is a fantastic opportunity to discover their objections, listen to their issues and calibrate them to the need for attending the course. This is why knowledge of the organisational context is important. It is imperative that this section on understanding their objections and you addressing them should be kept very short. The last thing that you want to do is spend significant time discussing their objections as it will have a destabilising effect of the morale of the group and your ability to deliver the course well and on time.

It is very common (and to be expected) that there will be at least one member of the course who will feel the need to demonstrate their expertise and challenge your authority or credibility in running the course. A good trainer would have used the five minute introduction phase of the course to establish they credibility and to flush out the individuals who are likely to be ‘lively’.

Delivering a lively, interesting course – mindful of the attendees behaviour

Some trainers mistakenly believe that delivering training in environments where some hostility is shown means they are entering a battle zone! The problem with this theory is that within every training environment there will be some hostility! The actions of the trainer can therefore make it substantially worse.

A good trainer does the following subconsciously:

• Analyse the attendees behaviour to discover which ones fall into the subsequent categories:

1. The ‘know it all’
2. The ‘sceptic’
3. The ‘been there done it’
4. The ‘enthusiastic puppy’
5. The ‘maverick’
6. The ‘follower’
7. The ‘academic’
8. The ‘life long learner’
9. The ‘demotivator’

• Adjust the course delivery and perhaps content to suit the training characteristics of the attendees
• Seek interaction and ensure that all learning styles are catered for
• Deal with each attendee according to their ‘training characteristic’ (for example the ‘maverick’ needs to be treated differently to the ‘follower’
• Are able to smoothly and flexibly shift their own style to meet the needs of the group
• Deliver a course that meets the objectives of the learner and the organisation

An example of dealing with a difficult training characteristic – the ‘maverick’

I define ‘maverick’ to mean wilful independence and it is this training characteristic which is probably the one that causes trainers the most difficulty. Mavericks have a high sense of self confidence and self esteem and believe that they are more intelligent than others. This can be a heady mix when they are faced with a trainer that has not established their credibility or is delivering a course that they consider to be boring or inappropriate for them.

The following are likely indicators that you are facing a maverick:

• You are asked a number of questions that are disrupting and show that they believe they know more than you do on the subject
• You are shown disrespect by the attendee (this can be on a continuum from mild to extreme)
• They show their displeasure through body language and audio clues (eg heavy sighs and rolling of the eyes)
• You are challenged constantly and other attendees or yourself are undermined
• They refuse to participate in the course or the exercises

Interventions to use with the maverick training characteristic

• Establish credibility upfront and immediately
• Discover their objectives/objections for being on the course (and build into the course)
• Find a way to avoid making them look stupid (if you fail you are likely to make running the training course extremely difficult)
• Ensure that you do not lose control or appear uneasy
• Provide boundaries and structure (when you need to enforce your control, do it quickly and do not dwell on it – avoid trying to make the maverick lose face in front of their peers)
• Be clear on the objectives of the course, and how the course will run. What are the components of the course?
• Give them something to do – eg ensure they lead on some of the exercises
• Recognise them (whilst ensuring that they do not dominate the course) and appeal to their intellectual ability

Training courses present the trainer with an opportunity to engage with all members of team, even those who seem to be resistant to whatever you are trying to teach them. Remember that a one size fits all approach is unlikely to be successful as is approaching resistance from a defensive position!  It can be easy to spend the majority of the course then fighting your corner, but by using some of the techniques mentioned above, you can be better placed to deliver a lively and interesting course which has benefit for all those in attendance.

Read about Jude and our other authors here

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here.  Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 26^th August.

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Good work leads to productivity & performance

Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK. 

There truly is a wonderful community of HR people on Twitter and today proves that.  Due to unforeseen circumstances our regular writer wasn’t able to appear today; a Tweet for help was swiftly followed by Megan Peppin, aka @OD_optimistcoming to the rescue! (Ed Scrivener)

Good work leads to productivity &  performance

The Work Foundation findings published in May last year find in favour of “good work” for boosting business performance and identify a number of organisational processes and dynamics that shape “good work”.  One way of explaining the concept of good work is Eurofound:

• Secure and interesting jobs that employees find fulfilling, which contribute to the achievement of high performance and sustainable business success
• A style and ethos of management that is based on high levels of trust and recognises that managing people fairly and effectively is crucial to skilled work and high performance
• Choice, flexibility and control over working hours
• Autonomy and control over the pace of work and the working environment
• Voice for employees in the critical employer decisions that affect their futures

I guess no surprises here; more reinforcement that management and leadership behaviour is the most significant factor in shaping organisational performance.

Here’s something that grabbed my attention – their findings under inequalities talk about the importance of recruitment:

“Gender, and other, inequalities persist in the workplace – but the underlying causes are as likely to be in processes and culture that set expectations which perpetuate disadvantage, as in the pay structures:

Tackling inequality means exploring whether the design of recruitment, assessment and promotion processes and procedures, often unintentionally, mitigate against equal chances of progressing through the organisation.”

Umm, what’s going on with recruitment?

So here’s the thing I wanted to write about – recruitment.

“The REC’s Medium Term Forecast predicts the recruitment industry’s annual growth at 3.6 per cent next year (2011/12) followed by 4.7 per cent in 2012/13, rising to 7.1 per cent for 2013/14 and 7.3 per cent in 2014/15. This represents a return to single figure growth over the next four years to reach a new peak of £30.8 billion in 2014/15.” From the Recruitment and Employment Confederation website.  

You say what??

The skills of recruiting when undertaken by the recruiting manager is in my view one of the most important learning activities that managers can do that is directly transferrable into all managerial work.

Here are some facts and some observations – how many of them do you agree/disagree with?

• People leave their jobs primarily because they are dissatisfied with their relationship with their manager/opportunities to discover and fulfil their potential
• People are the most expensive resource in the majority of organisations
• A workforce who feels valued and included is likely to be more motivated.
• A motivated workforce has more potential than a disenfranchised workforce.
• Difficult conversations, uncomfortable relationships are the most time consuming and complex problems many people have to deal with at work.
• Women are still paid less than men and there are less of them in senior roles that there could be.
• We have an ageing workforce
• Having a disability should not be a disadvantage.
• Recruiting the wrong person is costly and has negative impact.
• Recruiting the right person is costly and brings about benefits.

If you agree with just some of these, it begs the question of why we outsource recruitment of this most precious and important, time consuming and costly resource.

There’s a lot being discussed and written about recruitment at the moment.  The candidate experience is really variable and often poor (I’m being nice) - you just need to talk to anyone looking for job.  Filtering systems are subjective (the list of things that annoy recruiters is long and wide, just Google it) and therefore open to discriminatory practices.  More than 90% of HR professionals think that inequality is still rife in the workplace, particularly between the sexes.  Changing this surely must start right at the beginning of the process, flushing out unconscious bias at conception.  Employers too seem to see recruiters as a necessary evil, and yet are spending £30bn – a costly complaint.

I wonder too how all this outsourcing transfers to underlying attitudes towards staff – are they seen as commodity with a monetary value or a person with whom their manager feels both emotional and financial investment? Outsourcing doesn’t create accountability, just provides someone to blame if it doesn’t work out, and most central to my argument, managers don’t learn anything from it.

Do it yourself

Here’s why I believe recruitment if it sits with managers brings about amazing benefits:

• At each stage, there are rich experiences that will be directly transferred into day to day work and skills for the recruiting manager.
• Understanding the commercial aspects of recruiting, the time, energy, costs by designing and implementing the end to end process.
• Having to know the law on equalities at the outset, helps understand their own filters and prejudices and this insight gets transferred into every day decisions, choices and programme design.
• Undertaking interviews, learning to ask exploratory, probing questions, directly applicable to performance management, providing skilled constructive feedback and making evidence based decisions.
• Observing at assessment centres/evaluating other data collected through the interview process increases capability to collect objective evidence and increase capability to be fact based when providing feedback
• And importantly ownership and investment in the person recruited.  One mistake and more care will be invested in this timely and costly process.
• Oh, and HR should get less trouble shooting as recruiting decisions will be more carefully thought out, owned, managed and learned from.

I’m not suggesting that there is never a place for outsourcing; for bulk seasonal roles, for specialist search, for interim/FTC roles, and when you just have to, but currently managers are not getting the opportunity to develop these core skills.

Recruiting skills are transferable into all aspects of their work and financially, I can’t see how the time it takes to put into the recruitment won’t give an ROI as the emotional and economic investment is so much greater into the person they have recruited.

I know there are recruiters out there who are totally committed to professional standards and who are equally frustrated with some of the poor practice.  These I am sure are delivering both a great candidate experience (don’t hear lots of these I have to say) and providing wisdom and guidance through ethical and businesslike processes. Managers will make better partnering choices when they decide to outsource, if they understand, care about, and feel responsible for recruitment which should mean that recruiters become not the problem but the solution.

Is this just me then?

About the author

I’m Meg Peppinand I work with individuals, groups and organisations who are interested in exploring and achieving their potential. I work as a coach, a group facilitator and organisation change agent.

I also carry out research, write, and work with organisations on specific projects including evaluating funding impact, designing developmental tools and programmes.  I’m a trained mediator, and facilitate the Human Synergistics Advanced Accreditation Workshop – Leadership and Culture.  I’m currently working one day a week for Drake Music as their OD Lead as they grow their amazing work and reach.

I really care about inclusion and transparency, I believe that there is always potential in every situation.   I approve of having fun whilst working hard.

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here.  Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 29^th April.

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Valentine's Day for Business

Welcome to Discuss HR, the HR blog written by Human Resources UK. 

Today’s Discuss HR has a distinctly romantic feel and Una Doyle looks at how you can create deeper connections. (Ed Scrivener)

Valentine's Day for Business

Whether or not you are a romantic, this is a great opportunity to remind yourself to 'spread the love' in your business. Valentine's Day is all about making new and/or deeper connections. How could you do this in your workplace? Look to demonstrate your commitment, value and appreciation.

You might want to start with romancing yourself. When was the last time that you sat down and wrote down your accomplishments in the last year or few years? Large or small, get them all down and congratulate yourself for what you have achieved. Treat yourself with a special meal, a trip away or even a nice soak in the bath with a good book. It will be hard to make others feel special, if you don't feel special yourself.

Make sure you are really clear about the value you offer to your team and customers. Think about ways you could increase the amount of time you get to spend working in your strengths to increase your value to the business - and have more fun.

If you are working in a team then make sure to thank each and every team member for their contribution. Write them a note of what you value most in them and their work. Not only will it give them a warm fuzzy, they'll likely do more of whatever you wrote and improve their performance. Just use a plain card or one with a picture on it though, rather than an actual Valentine's card - you don't want your staff to think you have romantic attachments!

If you are a HR consultant/self-employed, do the same with your suppliers as they are your team. What do they do that enables you to focus on your strengths and have a stronger and more sustainable business?

When it comes to customers, what could you do to make them feel special too? Make sure it's not just a special offer but something free that's genuinely of value. It doesn't have to be a product or something that costs you. It could simply be a list of useful resources or an e-guide on a hot topic.

Highlight your top customers and send them a Valentine's card explaining what you appreciate about them as a customer - perhaps how they are great to deal with, or even what they do for their customers that you think is wonderful. This applies just the same to internal customers.

With everybody, make sure to consider their personality type and how they may prefer to receive this appreciation. Some would love for you to talk with them face-to-face or on the phone, others would prefer to see what you say in writing and could be embarrassed if in person.

In order to thank others, you'll first need to truly consider their strengths and weaknesses and how these show up in performance. What difference is each individual really making to business performance? How do they make your life, your team's or your customers' lives that bit easier?

This clarity on who delivers what kind of value and communication around it can deepen your connection with those that you work with because it builds trust.

This trust is vital In order to stand out in your marketplace. A sustainable career and business depends upon effective collaboration over the long term, whether a solopreneur or multinational corporate.

The special bonus is that you get to feel good by making others feel good. Go on - make their day!

Read about Una and our other authors here

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Discuss HR is the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK, the 10,000 member strong LinkedIn group dedicated to the HR professionals in the UK.  Discuss HR is published twice weekly and looks to take an insightful, informative and sometimes irreverent view on the world of HR – all with the purpose of generating a discussion.

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If you would like to be a guest writer for Discuss HR, you can find more information here.  Our next guest writer week is the week commencing 29^th April.

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The big misunderstanding about online networking

Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.

Human Resources UK is a LinkedIn group and by default is a social networking forum.  As such it is only apt that following last week’s article about how and why HR should network more that we conclude the theme focusing on online networking.  Today we welcome our latest guest writer, Ellen Selby, an experienced blogger and somewhat of a social media guru. (Ed Scrivener)

The big misunderstanding about online networking

You WILL listen to everything I say!

The misunderstanding between social networking online and social networking face to face is long present in today’s world of constant ’dialogue’ marketing. However, you’ll find that both are equally as effective if you can understand them well enough.

Whether you’re a twitter addict, and you find – like many of us – a smartphone glued to your hand each day, or you simply cannot stop talking, you are basically using networking techniques that are the same. The only difference is, one of them is getting misunderstood far more than the other. Let me explain.

You’ve probably caught onto the relatively new craze that is Social Media for your business. Of course, whether it is working for you is another matter entirely and is dependent on whether you’re using it in the right way for the right reasons. To illustrate the point properly: what do you do when you attend a Social Networking event, to make you and your business look fantastic?

Common practise is to ask a fair amount of questions, answer the ones you can answer, interact animatedly with all potential clientele that you find, offer help to others as well as accepting help from the members of your networking group, and advertising your business where possible and when it is appropriate. It is this high and diverse level of interaction that face to face marketing allows that gives it the potential to be successful. However, many people using Social Media online find that they cannot replicate this successful social process. Rather, they are using online social media to talk AT people.

Let’s put it this way. When, at a networking event have you responded well to someone talking ‘at’ you? Unless the person in question is an incredibly inspirational speaker, you are unlikely to respond positively. Unfortunately a lot of people use Social Media for precisely this, and assume it is a free ‘Social Advertising space’, forgetting about the ‘Social Networking’, engagement or interaction element. These users post their content and leave it, without interacting with others or looking up relevant topics at the time. Not only does this make their posts uninteresting, it also makes the news they are reporting irrelevant to what is happening at the time and gives no opportunity for further engagement.

Unfortunately, of the 90% of websites and businesses that use Social Media as a networking tool, only 50% use it effectively. This leaves a large percentage of businesses tweeting and Facebooking into nothingness, when this needn’t be the case at all. The trick is to mimic the same skills you would use at your physical networking events, and use them online. For instance, the one thing everyone loves to do – business or no business, is talk about themselves! So ask your followers questions to show you are interested in helping, and give your followers the opportunity to indulge in writing a few lines themselves. This not only promotes the same feelings of involvement and community, similar to networking events, but also engages people so you are able to learn more about your potential customers.

Whether you are talking to an actual crowd or your online followers, your networking techniques need to be engaging and filled with the personality of your business. If you find yourself needing to ‘advertise’ certain aspects of your business online, ensure that your posts are enthralling and customer focused, and steer clear of saying anything on Social Networking sites that you would not say ‘out loud’.

The tone of Social Media is forever changing, and will continue to do so as we move forward, causing us to constantly evolve and change how we present ourselves. We must be flexible: but hold onto the human element that we know wins business.

About the author

Ellie Selby’s specialities lie in the realms of Social Media and helping and adapting businesses to grow their sales in the world of B2B. Quality and not Quantity is what matters when Social Media is involved: to be worthwhile it must reap results.

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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK.  Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 21^st June and will be written by employment law expert Annabel Kaye.

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