Missing the Social Point

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

As you will be aware our networking events started this week and as it is my time to post today, I felt it was apt to focus on networking as a subject; or more precisely social networking and the apparent misuse of LinkedIn by a HR professional. (Ed Scrivener)

Missing the Social Point

If you have glanced at the discussion pages of Human Resources UK or flicked through the newspapers recently you will have no doubt become aware of the story of the HR Executive sacked by his employers, BG Group, for using his LinkedIn profile incorrectly.

Firstly, let’s clear up a few points.  He wasn’t sacked from his position, he left due to collapse of working relations with his superiors that stemmed from his “inappropriate” use of LinkedIn.  This has come to light as he has brought a case of constructive dismissal.

I am not going to attempt to explain the nuances of employment law as quite frankly I wouldn’t know where to start! What I will do is explain how BG Group is shooting themselves in the foot, as they are missing the point and more importantly the value of LinkedIn and social media as a whole.

In one of my earlier posts for Discuss HR I explained how I have managed to harness social media to be a hugely effective part of my business.  The key to this is simply to engage with your audience.  There will be no interest in your brand, be it personal or employer, if all you do is sell.  People use social media to learn and engage – after all there is a reason it is called SOCIAL media!

Looking at this case in more detail, John Flexman was Head of Graduate Recruitment at BG Group.  His inappropriate use of LinkedIn was as follows:

• He had listed “career opportunities” as an option in his “contact John for” section of his profile – this was seen as a conflict of interest.
• He had listed information about how he has reduced staff attrition – which was viewed as disclosing confidential information.  BG Group requires only dates and job titles are provided in LinkedIn profiles.

There are so many glaring errors in this approach!  The first point to focus on is that John Flexman is a recruitment professional.  It is his remit to attract talented graduates and the use of LinkedIn is essential to any resourcing strategy.  Current figures list LinkedIn membership at close to 140 million and it is recognised that 14 million are students or recent graduates, hence why it is essential to have a presence within the platform.

Secondly, no doubt a large number of you will have career opportunities listed within your profile despite the fact you are not looking for a new role.  In fact many of you will be completely unaware of this being listed!  The vagaries of the LinkedIn settings process makes it extremely easy for this to be overlooked.  More importantly though, is that nowhere does it state “career opportunities” is solely related to looking for new employment.  I am presuming BG Group view the option of “Job Inquiries” as the only option Mr Flexman should have listed.  But if you were a fresh faced graduate, it would not be beyond the realms of reality to consider that job inquiries mean the person is only interested about jobs and not people!  Surely as a recruitment professional he should have “career opportunities” listed as something of interest?

BG Group’s concern was that he was actively touting himself on LinkedIn as looking for work.  As someone who uses the medium for headhunting on a very regular basis, that option makes no difference.  I can still contact anyone about a prospective role regardless of whether that is listed.  Therefore, having this removed as part of a social media policy is not only draconian it is also rather pointless!

Finally, and for me this is the key point, the fact BG Group require only job titles and dates to be listed in profiles, this will be doing real damage to their employer brand. 

Imagine the scenario: you see a role advertised with a company that you wish to apply for.  As you are a clued-up job seeker you want to research them and see if you have any form of referral to utilise, so you get onto LinkedIn. When you do find a company employee you find no information about the business, so you move on to another one and another.  There is no information listed at all about these peoples’ remits or the business as a whole.  It would be very easy to be left rather deflated about this as you could jump to the conclusion that either the company administer an extremely strict information policy, or that the business as a whole is somewhat behind the pace of time.  Either way they are certainly not engaging with you and it doesn’t fill you with confidence in the role or business. 

An engagement expert

If a business loses just one talented person due to this then they are damaging their brand.  Rather fear social media, they should embrace it.  If you look at employees from the likes of ITV or CH2M Hill you will find detailed profiles and clear links to their respective job pages or website.  In these instances they are engaging with any prospective reader and job seeker.

One element John Flexman was criticised for was including detailed information about how he reduced staff attrition.  BG Group claim this was confidential whereas Mr Flexman maintains it was public knowledge; either way let me put this question to you, if you were a graduate looking for your first job would you be attracted to a business that publically states its employees stay with the business?  At that stage of your career you want to learn and be nurtured and surely this would inspire you with confidence to see such promising and open information?

The world is changing at a rate of knots but companies should not be risk averse and fear change, they need to embrace it if they want to be the employer of choice.  Social media, whether it be LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or any of the other thousand platforms, is there to build relationships with customers, clients, employees and prospective employees.  The only way this can successfully be achieved is for companies to engage with their audience.

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!

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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 26^th January when we will welcome our latest guest writer, seasoned blogger and HR Director Alison Chisnell.

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Don’t let compliance lock you down

Welcome to this week’s edition of Discuss HR.  It has been published a little earlier than usual due to my pressing business meeting at Cheltenham Racecourse...  I hope by now you understand how Discuss HR works and what we’re striving to achieve.  This week sees the return of Employment Law specialist Annabel Kaye, who previously wrote “Employment law basics and fundamentals”.  This week Annabel considers whether employment law practices should be more than just compliant. (Ed Scrivener)

Don’t let compliance lock you down

Is your way of dealing with employment law to look at compliance and do that?   A lot of organisations do just that.   If minimum wages go up, pay goes up.  If statutory holiday goes up, holidays go up.   If maternity leave goes up, that goes up.  You get the picture.

This approach to employment law tends to go with a defensive model of HR.  The processes in the business are ‘locked down’ – often by HR – to prevent ‘mistakes’ or ‘employment tribunals’.     The whole focus of how employees are dealt with is on process compliance.   A lot of insurance based schemes effectively require it.  This has an effect on the organisation – locking it down to processes and timescales that make it hard to keep agile.    

Like a Sumo wrestler, the organisation ‘wins’ by keeping their weight low, making it hard to shift things and staying in the circle.  Sumo wrestlers who are pushed out of their circle lose their match!.   Attacking Sumo wrestlers stay low and use their weight and momentum to knock their opponent out of the circle.  

Is that what someone accessing your grievance procedure is experiencing?  Do people have to ‘hack your sytems’ to get anything done?

This model has its merits in organisations that don’t need to change very quickly, or need to negotiate every detail of their change with Unions or multi-tier boards.   As long as the organisation remains stable, it can work, but anyone who tries to wrestle the Sumo champion will find themselves outside the circle in another job!

Smaller organisations and more entreprenurial organisations prefer to stay agile and want to be free of ‘process’.  Flexibility is a big thing for organisations that are trying to grow fast and respond to their market.

They can turn on a spot, and there is nothing they can’t do.  Their approach to employment law is not based on any kind of coherent decision.  They might be generous about one thing, under the legal minima about another, but they handle things as they go.  Of course, not everyone has the skills or the training to be that balanced or that flexible.   This can work if the organisation devotes a lot of time to training, communication and embodying their values, but it can degenerate into something where the people who are not emotional or intellectual gymnasts get hurt.    A lot of organisations appoint their first internal HR person when someone falls over and they or the organisation gets hurt.   There is a temptation to ‘do a Sumo’ on the entrepreneurial gymnasts.  The experienced HR practitioner will miss having systems and processes in place.  The temptation is to import the systems that existed where you were before.   Unless you figure out where the organisation really wants to be on employment law, you will soon be the corporate ‘No’ person.  The one who says, “Employment law says you can’t.....”

Organisations need to be able to adapt and respond to change.  Employment law is part of a bigger mix of ingredients, and should not be allowed to dominate the organisation’s thinking about people, any more than consumer law should make you refuse to sell a product (unless it is dangerous of course).  Most people are neither Sumo wrestlers or gymnasts.   They need to know fundamentals in order to perform their role, but they don’t usually want to be rooted to the ground or a high wire act!.    Employment law is not about demonising or criminalising behaviour (though some off the graph behaviour does belong in that category).  It is about setting codes and signals that let people know what is expected of them, when they are able to move freely and make their own decisions, and what fundamental rules  exist that really are not to be broken.

On the social dance floor, ordinary people can do great things, cooperating with their immediate partner and within a group.   They do this because they learn the fundamentals of the dance and the codes of the dance floor.

Social dancers are not show dancers, they are not athletes but people working and playing in co-operation (and sometimes competition) with a group.   Too many rules and the dancers melt away to dance somewhere else.  Too few and the egoists take over the dancefloor and destroy the flow.

Employment law is a powerful tool in the workplace.  Like the codes of the tango dancefloor it can be used to help the flow of work and relationships.   Our strength in the UK is our ability to make contracts that reflect our own organisational priorities.   We can choose to Sumo, do gymnastics, dance tango, or anything else and embody that into our contracts and handbooks.

And in the interests of equality, everyone can dance – here is a picture of a wonderful ‘disabled’ dancer.

The question I want to ask you today is:

Do your contracts and handbooks speak with the right voice for your organisation and set the fundamentals and codes you need for success?

About the author 

Annabel Kaye has been specialising in employment law since the seventies.  She founded Irenicon in 1980 and has spent the last thirty years helping HR, line managers and everyone else look at employment law in a way that gets some organisational gain. She likes to think about things from a different angle and making the complex simple – despite the government’s best efforts.   She has traded through three recessions and advised clients from multi-national corporations to the smallest organisation. The toughest thing has always been to balance the competing needs of staff and organisation and that never goes away whatever the legal details.

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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 24^th March and will be written by experienced HR professional Sheena McLullich.

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