The Impact of Social Media on the Workplace

Peter Harwood

Chief Conciliator, Acas

What are Social Media?

“Media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques” Wikipedia

Mobile phones, emails, twitter, youTube, Facebook, websites with chat rooms or discussion groups etc

Key features of Social Media

• Reach - can be zero or global

• Accessibility – available at little or no cost

• Usability – little training needed

• Immediacy – virtually instantaneous

• Up to date – can be edited at a stroke

• But ‘permanent’ - hard to remove tracks

Some statistics• Facebook has 850+ million users worldwide and more than 30

billion pieces of shared content such as web links, news, blog posts, photos etc

• Facebook reports that 250 million users access the site through mobile devices

• First tweet sent on 21 March 2006

• Now 500 million tweets are sent per day

• Pop star Justin Bieber has 44.5 million followers

• In a straw poll of HR professionals 50% said social media had featured in recent disciplinary or tribunal proceedings

Announcing the new Pope. St Peter’s Square - Rome

Announcing the new Pope. St Peter’s Square - Rome

The impact on ER

• New legal and ethical questions on what the acceptable norms of behaviour are in a new social space at an individual level

• Potential to both share information and consult employees in new ways

• Stronger collective voice of employees

• Change in the conduct of collective disputes and collective bargaining

Policy response needed

Two papers commissioned:

• Workplaces and social networking – the implications for Employment Relations by the Institute for Employment Studies. Majoring on individual issues.

• Social Media and its impact on employers and trade unions by Stuart Smith, CEO Wood Holmes and Peter Harwood, Acas Chief Conciliator. Broader view.

ACAS Guidance & Research

Recruitment opportunities and challenges of social media

• Speed and efficiency• Target potential candidates• Ability to check candidates against multiple sources of

information

But…• Ethical questions about privacy• Possible discrimination against non-users and

disadvantaged groups within users

And of course…• Candidates now have much more information about

potential employers

Social Business

• Employee Engagement• Use digital tools to engage employees instantly

• Death of the Annual Appraisal?• Evidence that annual performance appraisals will not

be enough

‘HR Accidents’

• In 2007, the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) described the UK’s then 3.5 million Facebook users as “3.5 million HR accidents waiting to happen”.

• Now, the number of UK users has risen to 28.9 million or 58% of the 51.4 million people currently online.

IES Report main points

• Norms of behaviour not yet defined

• Blurring of public/private areas

• Need for policies drawn up with staff reps

• Good communication and reminders to staff of responsibilities re privacy and employer brand

• Mechanisms for handling grievances

• There are business benefits to be gained

UNI Global Union

Employers using the web too

The collective implications…

• Employers and unions have been wary and generally seen these developments as threats needing to be controlled

• How will they engage with these tools and accept the new possibilities for increased information sources and avenues for employee voice?

• The ability soon to be proactive and target prompts to like-minded people will have potential recruitment benefits for employers and unions

• Will there be more and different forms of unofficial action which will be harder to control?

• How do employers and unions deal with fragmented and freelance workforces?

Next steps…

Guidance produced on the Acas website:

Key point: develop policy and proportionate responses

• Recruitment• Managing Performance• Bullying• Defamation, data protection and privacy• Discipline and grievances

Research papers published on the website

• New paper just published – “The use of social media in the recruitment process”

Input at employer and trade union events

Acas contact information

Acas helpline

08457 47 47 47

Acas website

www.acas.org.uk *