Going digital? Harnessing social media for employee voice
"This report examines the extent to which employers are making use of social media to promote and access employee voice. Social media describes online platforms that allow for user-generated content, interaction and collaboration. It is a relatively new phenomenon, linked to the emergence of ‘w...
| Main Author: | |
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| Institution: | ETUI-European Trade Union Institute |
| Format: | TEXT |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Birmingham
2016
ACAS |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.labourline.org/KENTIKA-067012488529-Going-digital?-Harnessing-soci.htm |
| Summary: | "This report examines the extent to which employers are making use of social media to promote and access employee voice. Social media describes online platforms that allow for user-generated content, interaction and collaboration. It is a relatively new phenomenon, linked to the emergence of ‘web 2.0’ and the move from a static to an interactive internet. This report is largely focused on enterprise social networks. These have the common features of other social media platforms, but they are closed and exclusive, with membership restricted to an individual organisation.
The use of social media has grown exponentially in the last decade. Currently around one employer in two makes use of a social media tool. Use of social media is largely focused externally on marketing and engaging with customers. Fewer employers – only around one in six – use an enterprise social network internally to engage with employees and promote employee voice. Larger organisations and certain sectors such as information and communication are more likely to use social media in this way. Where employers do use an enterprise social network, they do so more to provide updates on the organisation and HR issues, rather than to collaborate or collect employee views.
Whereas three in four employees use social media in their personal life, just one in three do so as part of their work. Nevertheless, the high levels of personal usage might be driving the organisational take-up of social media in the form of enterprise social networks. Where enterprise social networks are used at work, few employees say it is done so effectively, to share knowledge or ideas or to access voice. There is little evidence that employees at organisations which do use enterprise social networks have a stronger sense of voice; indeed there is some evidence that while they feel managers seek their views more, they feel less able to influence decisions than at other organisations which don’t use enterprise social networks.
However, enterprise social networks are potentially a very powerful tool for employee voice. There is certainly evidence that more needs to be done to promote voice, with just one UK employee in three saying their managers are good at allowing them to influence decision-making.
The types of enterprise social networks described in this report can potentially help to promote a richer employee voice, allowing organisations to go beyond monologue and one-way communication to two-way and indeed multi-directional communication. Using such networks for employee voice provides the opportunity for organisations to drive insight and innovation. It also has immense potential to support collaboration, allowing employers to access ‘the wisdom of crowds’ – where, rather than an individual, groups of people work together to reach a solution or an outcome." |
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| Physical Description: | 44 p. Digital |