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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Is HR Part Of The Team?

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

I hoped you enjoyed last week’s guest blogger series, we shall be having another in August.  In the meantime we’re back to normal and we welcome back Wendy Mason who follows her previous post with a very interesting question about HR. (Ed Scrivener)

Is HR Part Of The Team?

As a civil servant, independent consultant and coach, I’ve worked with a number of large corporate organizations.  These have been right across the spectrum; from departments at the centre of Whitehall, to large voluntary organizations and on to private sector organizations that had the strongest commitment to making a profit for their shareholders.  And in all those organizations, at one point or another, I worked with, or otherwise encountered, their HR departments.

Now, some of those HR departments (in both private and public sectors) were outstandingly good at what they did. And some were not. 

But, what I would say about all of them is that somehow they stood a little apart.  The culture within the HR department was somehow different to that outside in the rest of the organization. Sometimes this difference was quite striking.  It was not always obvious that those in the HR department were actually working to the same agenda as those outside. At the same time, though, I was hearing HR managers complain bitterly about their lack of influence over operational managers.

Now, although my career has included stints working within HR, most of it has been outside. And a good part of my work has taken me into operational management.  I believe I was always a manager who cared about the well-being of their people.  I cared, as well, about working within the requirements of the law in terms both of employment law and Health and Safety.  But there were times when I had to make some very tough decisions.

I managed a large group of operational staff in a government department through a number of rounds of cuts and I led the same group through an early, and to some extent experimental, experience of “market testing”.  Throughout that time and in part because I had worked in HR, I wanted to engage with my HR colleagues. I needed their advice and support. But, in all honesty, I didn’t find the experience rewarding.  Somehow, the agenda of the HR team didn’t seem to be the same one that I had to work to.

I mention this now because, as a coach, I have clients in the public sector who have to go through some of the same challenges that I faced. And guess what? They are reporting some of the same issues that I encountered when they look for help and support from their HR departments.

Now I don’t know what the HR departments’ view of this would be.  Nor what the solution is to getting better communication between HR managers and operational managers. But I do know that if we are to ride the waves of current economic challenges with minimum casualties, we need to improve the quality of the debate and the discussion.

Read about Wendy 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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Career Development for the Over 60s

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

The new format of Discuss HR is well and truly up and running and you should be getting the gist of things.  Following on from her previous post “Stress and the HR Professional” we welcome back Wendy Mason who looks at how the over 60s can still develop their careers. (Ed Scrivener)

Career Development for the Over 60s

First I have to admit to a personal interest here; I am well over sixty.  Second, I have to make a confession; I still don’t really know what I want to do when I grow up.

David Willetts, the higher education minister, has spoken recently about encouraging older people take up degree courses. Quite a lot of over 60s take up degree courses already of course – in 2011/12, nearly 2,000 started a first degree.  Most of them were with the Open University with “The Arts Past and Present” being the most popular course, apparently.

               

But a history of art course is not what Mr Willets (who was known as “Two Brains” to my generation of Civil Servants) has in mind. No, what dear old David wants us to do is to “train”, so that we can cope with the pressures we will face as we work “well into our sixties”.  His comments follow a government report which has found that the country’s future economic success will depend on the skills and contributions of older workers. One in four people will be older than 65 by 2033.

So we are asked to abandon our studies in art, history, classical studies, English, philosophy, music and religious studies etc and concentrate instead on the skills that will be required at work in 2020. 

Dare I say it, I think the very intelligent Mr Willetts is starting in the wrong place. Based on my own experience, it isn’t what happens after 60 that matters so much as what happens in the years up to 60. 

I’ve had an extremely lucky career. Many moons ago, I joined a sector that was by its very nature conservative; the Civil Service. But it was also, at that time, one of the most enlightened with regard to equality of opportunity.  Let us not be naïve here.  I am not claiming that the organization I joined, the massive Department of Health and Social Security, did not reflect the prejudices of the age.  But the Civil Service was, and remains, committed to open competition. Once in, there was very little I could not compete for, after a period of time. I was not always on completely equal terms. but not usually that far off either.

So, being the gritty, determined “Midlander” that I am, I tried to talk my way into the famous “fast stream” of the Civil Service.  Note, that I had a nursing qualification rather than the conventional degree.  I was in the Fast Stream at about the same time as David, although there was a significant age gap between us. I think I came as something of a challenge to some of my peers but it shows you what could be done, even then.

Towards the end of my Civil Service career, the climate of equality and opportunity definitely outshone anything I’ve encountered since I left.  And that includes how they treated people of a certain age. Even in my late fifties, I still felt encouraged to develop, train and aspire. I received my last promotion, changed roles and changed departments at the age of 57 and it wasn’t considered odd.

So when I chose to leave at 60 – note the words “chose to leave” – it was quite natural to think in terms of what next and a new career. No, I did not commit to three or four years in University but I did do some further training and set off with confidence in to work in the private sector.

I’m pretty sure I would not have done so, without the encouragement I had had from my employer in the years up to 60.  They had not excluded me, made me feel too old or shown they felt I was unworthy their investment. My knowledge, experience and willingness to learn were respected and my personal development was encouraged.  All that meant that at 60 plus, I continued to see work-related learning as still relevant to me.

Looking round now I believe I was very, very lucky. I wish more people in the years up to 60 had their confidence boosted in the same way that I did.  Perhaps then they would be much more willing to take up the challenge that David Willetts has set them.

Read about Wendy 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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Stress and the HR Professional

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

Happy New Year!

The New Year has brought some notable changes to the blog.  I have re-designed the blog with the intent of making it more user friendly for you.  I hope I have achieved this and would welcome your feedback.  Secondly and more importantly, I am delighted to welcome a host of new writers to the Discuss HR team.  We have doubled our size and now number 16 HR professionals with some exceptional bloggers to boot.  Finally, we will now publish our posts twice weekly, typically every Monday and Thursday morning.  I hope you enjoy these changes and without further ado one of our new writers, who you may well recognise from prior guest posts, Wendy Mason.  (Ed Scrivener)

Stress and the HR Professional

As you know stress is the body's way of responding to the demands put on it. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. When people feel stressed at work (and elsewhere) their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. These chemicals give us more energy and strength to deal with immediate pressures. They can give us the strength to deal with an emergency and then, when the pressure disappears, the chemicals just disappear from the body.  

As an HR professional I suspect you can think of lots of times when you have had to react in just this way.  For example, when there is sudden and unpleasant news to be delivered.  But what happens when we are under constant stress – for example, when we have to deal with a complicated and extended down-sizing exercise?  Well, again as you probably know, that same helpful fight or fright response starts to work against us. If we are under constant stress, the chemicals released remain in our bodies causing the more unpleasant symptoms of stress.  These have been associated with things like heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes. Certainly, stress can contribute to alcoholism, obesity, drug addiction, cigarette use and depression.

Why if you know about this already, am I rehearsing here?  Well, for the very good reason that I think we are much better at warning our clients about the effects of stress, than thinking about and managing our own stress.  Why do I think that? Mainly, I’m basing my assumption on my own experience.

I can think of two large tasks in HR which led me to have to deal with my own symptoms of stress. 

The first was major down-sizing exercise I led for a government department which should probably be nameless.  It was a department that traditionally had employed battalions of copy typists. With the advent of word-processing, their work had disappeared and guess who was charged with giving the good news and managing the resulting organizational change.  Unfortunately, at that time, their location and what was happening elsewhere in the department meant there was very little possibility of re-deployment. Many of them I knew personally and I knew how dependent they were on the jobs we provided. It hurt.  It hurt them and it hurt me.  Oh I could rationalise it till the cows came home. We all knew why it was happening, but it still hurt and it went on hurting.  

On the other occasion, I had a complicated and challenging TUPE transfer to manage - 2000 people from 112 different employers all being moved into one new organization. It had to be done quickly and it was full of uncertainty because the organization they were to join didn’t exist yet.  I have never worked so hard.

Somehow both tasks were completed with relative success. Many of the copy typists opted with our support to try completely new things and to be prepared to be flexible in looking for new work.  The TUPE transfer took place as planned with far less hiccups than some had predicted.

But, among others, I paid a price. Stress can affect how you feel, how you think, how you behave and how your body works. I spent much of that time feeling irritable and anxious.  I was not a particularly pleasant colleague and I was certainly not a very pleasant partner at home. I spent quite a lot of time with my thoughts racing, expecting the worst to happen.  Plus, on top of that, I found I was suffering from sinusitis which for me is a stress reaction.  

I was very lucky; I had an understanding and supportive partner at home and a very good team at work.  But had I been more willing to admit to myself that I was showing the signs of stress and then sought help, things might have been a lot more comfortable and, who knows, I might have had an even more successful result.  I might have been able to do even more to ameliorate the negative effects of the changes for others.

If I was facing the same challenges now, I would certainly monitor how I was feeling more closely and take action earlier.  For example, I would certainly have considered working with a counsellor in parallel with my own work.  I have done that since when under unavoidable stress and it can make a huge difference to my own ability to cope.

Only you know how you feel at the moment about the amount of stress you carry.  Have the confidence to take an honest look at yourself and to seek the help you would be so willing provide to others.  I know in HR work you cannot avoid stress but I wish you every success in handling yours well and perhaps a little better than I have done in the past.

Wendy Mason 7th January 2013

Read about Wendy 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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Being or Not Being Commercially Aware!

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

I am sure it won’t have escaped anyone’s attention the discussion that has been taking place within the group “Public Sector vs Private Sector”.  This active thread has been discussing why there are barriers in place stopping public sector employees moving over to the private sector.  As such, I felt this was the perfect time to invite back our guest writer Wendy Mason.  Wendy specialises in advising people to make this move and today she looks at what really makes someone commercially aware. (Ed Scrivener)

Being or Not Being Commercially Aware!

I’ve been meditating on “commercial awareness” and what the phrase really means for a while. 

Now, I’ve had an interesting and diverse career.  For my sins, in my time, I’ve been

·         A warehouse clerk in a leather factory - don’t ask?

·         A cost clerk in a firm making eyelet machinery - now don’t you dare!

·         A school matron in a public school – now stop it!

·         A nurse in the NHS

·         A civil servant - various departments and working  with the wider public sector,

·         An independent consultant for the BBC and various large commercial companies

·         A director of three SMEs

·         A trustee for a large voluntary organization

Across the spectrum

No, I’m not looking for a role right now!  But I do believe that experience equips me to comment on the “public” and “private” sectors, the current debate about moving between them and the need for “commercial awareness”. 

When I was working with the NHS, the phrase that caused me most problems was ‘clinical decision”.  The definition and boundaries seemed rather flexible depending on the perspective of the user. Now in thinking about the private sector, the words that trouble me are commercial awareness. They seem to be a recurring theme in current recruitment debates.

Vivienne Aiyela asked on HR UK how a person who has public sector experience (and some private sector) can get a job in the private sector.  It has provoked a really lively debate!

Quite recently, Margaret Adams, who is an expert in business communications, tackled the same subject on my blog, “Leaving the Public Sector”.  Margaret started her professional career in the public sector and then went on to success in the private sector. 

In all innocence, I trailed Margaret’s guest post on LinkedIn and Ecademy.  The response surprised me.

·         “I won’t employ ex-public sector people I have found them to be un-cooperative, in-flexible and generally a lot slower than people who haven’t spent a decade in the public sector” 

·         “The public sector doesn't teach you how to sell things, it always tells you what the job is and you never have to ask for money.” This is from someone with public sector experience.

But then there were more measured responses but not necessarily ones I’d agree with, for example.

·         “People can make the trip. In either direction, but only if they recognise the 180 degree change in approach needed. The ethos, accounting, motivation, measurement, governance and raison d’être have almost zero in common.”

I can see where this comes from, and that it is intended to be helpful, but I wondered!

I know lots of people in the public sector right now who handle huge budgets.  Their continued employment depends on their ability to handle that money well, and to account for it; talk to senior finance managers in the wider public sector. 

Many in the public sector have to be commercially astute! Try handling a large and complex tender exercise successfully without it.

I’ve worked with a number of people in the private sector who know little about handling money; neither do their roles need them to be commercially aware.

But being “commercially aware” is clearly a requirement in the current market place.

I found this quote recently on a university website “Every graduate recruiter we have spoken to in the last year has told us that commercial awareness is a key component of every successful candidate”. 

I looked up what other people say commercial awareness really means.  I think it can be summed up as;

·         An interest in the particular business sector, an understanding of the wider environment in which an organisation operates: its customers, competitors and suppliers.

·         Some understanding of the economics of the business and an understanding of the commercial realities from both the organisation's and the customer's perspectives.

·         An understanding the need for efficiency, cost-effectiveness, customer care and knowledge of the market place in which the company operates.

So, I wondered, does it not come down to the advice HR professionals give candidates as routine?  If you want to work in particular sector, do your home work and demonstrate your transferable skills.  Go out of your way to research particular issues for the organisation you are applying to join.  Research the environment in which they operate.  Then make sure you demonstrate just what you can bring that is going to help. What your unique contribution is going to be!

Of course, that won’t deal with the client who says “Do not send me anyone from the public sector!” But think about it.  Would you want to recommend candidates to work for them anyway?  Well, perhaps I’m showing a lack of commercial awareness in asking that question right now.  What do you think?

About the author

Wendy Mason is a performance, programme, and contract management and change specialist. She works as a consultant, business coach and blogger.

Blog (leadership & change) | Blog (leaving the public sector)| Email | LinkedIn| Twitter

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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 10^th November and will be written by Annabel Kaye.

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Sell, sell, sell!!

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

I have to apologise that due to a rescheduling of the writers rota you’re going to have to put up with me again, but then you’ll have 10 weeks off from me!  It has becoming increasingly apparent to me in recent years that good HR is comparable to good sales and this is my post about unleashing your sales side! (Ed Scrivener)

Sell, sell, sell!!

If I asked you to give examples of a poor sales experience I am sure each and every one of you could give me numerous.  We’ve all had the pushy cold caller that won’t take no for an answer, or the salesman that completely ignores what you want and tries to sell you something you have no need for.  I dare say a few of you would have a few examples of your dealings with recruitment consultants to add to the mix!

I'd sell my mum for that fee!

If I asked you to give examples of a good sales experience I am sure you would struggle.  The vast bulk would only be able to give a small handful of examples and I firmly believe the remainder would consider they have never had a good sales experience!  The truth of the matter is that a good sales experience should leave you not knowing you been sold to.  This doesn’t mean there is some covert or unethical approach taken by sales people, but quite simply a good sales person will listen to your needs and identify what it is you need, which isn’t always what you initially thought it would be.  The key to being a good sales person is to engage with people and build a rapport.  Which leads me on to my point, sales professionals and HR professionals are actually quite alike.  We need to interact and engage with people; we need to negotiate and persuade others; we aim to ensure all parties benefit, but with our employer always as the main stakeholder.  HR professionals show many traits of a good sales person, which is why it never ceases to amaze me why so many HR professionals cannot sell.

Many of you will be immediately thinking “well how many HR people are actually required to sell?”  I am sure very few of you have made the career transition from HR to telesales for example, but sales is so much more than being pushy on a phone!  To put this into context I want to look at 3 areas where I feel HR professionals come up wanting in sales ability – but this is an ability all of you should have due to your current vocation.

Darth Vader moved into sales

Firstly, I have seen countless people make the move from being employed to becoming a consultant.  They have these wonderful dreams of moving from company to company solving problems whilst also incorporating a great work life balance. The cold reality is that many consultants fail as they cannot manage the sales element.  When you look closely it is clear because they have misunderstood what is involved.  It seems many believe they should be undertaking cold calling and sending marketing material to countless organisations.  Clearly this is not the trait of an HR professional.  What they should be doing is taking a far more personable approach.  They need to utilise their network and seek referrals; listen to people and identify needs and view these as opportunities.  To put it into HR terms, identifying sales opportunities is no different to TNA.  One area in particular that seems to attract a lot of attention is providing HR support to SMEs, as there is a belief that HR will strongly benefit these businesses (which is very true).  The reason so many people fail to develop this market is that they just tell the companies what they offer, rather than listen to what the company needs!  If you were conducting TNA you listen to what is needed and then develop the training to suit – sales is no different.

Secondly, is the ability to sell oneself.  I am sure a number of you will have said this in the past, but when you use a recruitment consultant you trust, you are doing so because of the person and not the business.  The recruiter has successfully sold themselves to you.  In your day to day job as an HR professional you have to do exactly the same.  You may be attempting to persuade a hiring manager to utilise and develop existing talent rather than going externally.  You will put forward a business case to persuade them of the benefits.  If achieve this it is because the manager has bought into you and your ideas because you have presented what was needed.  So put this into your own terms when you look for new employment.  You need to present yourselves in a way that appeals to the hiring manager.  HR professionals read countless CVs, so take on board what stands out for you.  The biggest failing I see in HR CVs is a lack of achievement.  When you scratch beneath the surface it is clear the individuals have numerous achievements to shout about, yet these choose to write a CV like a job description.  This is what will make an employer stand up and notice.  Similarly read the job advert, (i.e. listen) then deliver what is needed – so tailor your CV to each individual application highlighting the relevant points ensuring you meet the employer’s needs.  You can all tell when a sales person approaches you and they have made no attempt to research you or listen to your needs – well it works exactly the same way with CVs and applications.  You already will know this as you don’t buy into the CVs that don’t hit the mark, yet you fail to transfer this to your own terms.

The infamous Gerald Ratner

Third and finally, one of the key traits of any business is to ensure your brand and integrity are of the highest standing.  You only need to think of the impact Gerald Ratner had when he described his products as “total crap!”  Everyone stopped buying his jewellery overnight.  Recruitment agencies are rightly criticised for lack of feedback and poor processes, but as we all know employers are just as bad.  You are just as unlikely to receive feedback from a direct approach as you are via an agency.  Equally, the method of communication during hiring processes can lack empathy for the candidate.  I recently heard about someone who had been for three 2 hour long interviews with a company and was then rejected via text!  This is just one of many examples I can cite and what so many people fail to realise is that a poor recruitment process is just like a poor sales process.  HR can be very good at focusing on employee engagement, yet they forget too easily about the employer brand and engaging with external talent.  There are a couple of businesses in my area that have such a bad recruitment reputation that hordes of people avoid them like the plague, surely this is not good for the fortunes of these businesses?

At this point I should make it very clear that there are many HR professionals who are exceptionally good at sales.  These are the people that completely understand sales is about engaging, listening and delivering solutions.  Many of these people will be completely unaware what they are actually doing is selling, but they are successful in this field because they are true “people” people.

So remember, whether your selling yourself as a consultant or jobseeker, or representing your employer listen, identify and deliver – you’ll soon realise you do this every day already, but you just hadn’t realised it’s sales!

About the author

Ed is an HR recruitment specialist and social media trainer.  He holds over 8 years industry specific experience recruiting mainly for middle and senior HR management positions. He stumbled upon social media a few years ago and has since become passionate about the subject.  He now trains job seekers and independent consultants in social media techniques. He is the Group Manager of Human Resources UK and Editor of Discuss HR and occasionally his humour will creep into articles!

Blog | Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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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 3^rd November when we will welcome back our guest writer, Wendy Mason.  There have been a number of public sector focused discussion within the group recently, so I felt it very apt that Wendy returns!

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Remember that embarrassing moment?

Apologies for the delay, however, Blogger now seems to be back in working order, so here we are again with another Discuss HR.  The excellent guest spot by Wendy Mason touched upon a very topical point about the transition from public to private sector.  This week regular columnist Jill Hart-Sanderson discuss another, potentially even more relevant topic, namely the use and misuse of social media in the work place. (Ed Scrivener)

Remember that drunken embarrassing moment?

Remember that drunken, embarrassing moment when you were 19 that someone captured on camera? Well your friends might, and they may think it’s hilarious to post it on their Facebook page and tag you. Which means the photo will then appear on your Facebook profile page. Now is that something you want your important business contacts to see?

More and more organisations recognise that social networking is changing the way in which people do business. Love them or hate them, the rise and rise of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cannot be ignored. Companies can no longer afford to blanket-ban any kind of social networking interaction: by embracing it they can engage with their customers in a way never possible in the past as well as build the trust of their employees.

So what can HR teams do to support their organisations during this era of rapid change? One of the first steps should be to check there are clear guidelines and expectations and that they are effectively communicated by managers to their teams.  Once it’s been established who should be using networking sites and for what purpose, communications should be consistent with the overall values of the company.

In most cases it would be impossible to ‘vet’ all blogs, comments and tweets, therefore the individual employees must know that they are ultimately responsible for the content they publish online, whether on a social site or any other form of user-generated media. They should: be mindful that what they publish will be public for a long time; be reminded to protect their privacy; and make sure they understand a site's terms of service.

Here’s what a guideline for employees might include:

·         Is it in the right tone and does it reflect our company values and beliefs?

·         Would you be happy for any of our current or potential customers to read it?

·         Make it your own: include your name and be clear whether you are speaking for yourself or on behalf of the organisation (if on behalf of the organisation, get agreement to the content)

·         Remember customer confidentiality is essential unless the customer has made it clear they’re happy for the content to appear

·         Respect copyright, data protection and financial disclosure laws

·         Never discuss our or anyone else’s business performance or other sensitive matters publicly

·         Don't publish anything that might allow inferences to be drawn that could embarrass or damage a customer or colleague

·         Respect your audience and show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory, such as politics and religion

·         Ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and customers

·         Don't pick fights; be the first to correct your own mistakes

·         Once you start a discussion/blog follow the comments and reply when appropriate; remember comments may be left months after your initial post

·         Regard what you post as a document: sense-check and proof-read it

·         Keep your profile up to date and consistent with the rest of your team

·         Remember you’re reaching an international audience

·         Try to add value, provide worthwhile information and perspective

·         Clearly understand the site’s privacy settings and use them to protect the business as well as yourself

Profiles are also something that will need to be considered if you are drawing up guidance for your organisation. They need to have personality, but be aware the details are in the public domain and could be linked to the business.

Social media can be fantastic tools, but organisations need to be clear about how they’re to be used and help all employees appreciate the pitfalls and benefits of this global phenomenon.

What’s your organisation’s social networking policy? Has it been clearly communicated to all employees? What impact has it had?

For further reading, including legal implications when using social media have a look at this CIPD webpage

About the author

Jill loves working with the team at Rambutan helping people to think, lead and communicate brilliantly in order to achieve business, team or personal goals. Before joining the Rambutan bunch, Jill was part of the HR Consultancy Team at University College London. Her previous management experience in both the public and private sector means she has seen how great HR support can make a real difference to individual managers and organisations as a whole

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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 2^nd June and will be written by HR recruitment specialist Ed Scrivener. 

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