Access ‘not the main barrier’ to realising potential
Employers could be missing key engagement, collaboration and training opportunities by not fully utilising social media in their organisations, CIPD research has revealed.
Social media is still a long way off infiltrating the workplace to the extent it has become embedded in people’s personal lives, according to the institute’s report, 'Social technology, social business?’.
The survey of more than 2,000 employees, unveiled at the CIPD’s Social Media in HR conference today, found that while three in four employees use social media in their personal lives, just one in four use it for work purposes.
The study revealed that the groups who were particularly active on social media were senior leaders (53 per cent) and 18- to 24-year-olds (42 per cent).
Access was not necessarily a major barrier – half of employees reported having access to social media at work, double the number who actually used it. The research showed that the main factors were issues of perception and organisational culture.
Half of the workers who used social media for work on a daily basis reported that they had already seen real benefits for their organisations. But many employees were not yet convinced of the value of social media or its relevance to their role, as just 6 per cent of non-users could see the benefits.
The study found that overall, social media was much more likely to be used for networking and collaboration externally, rather than within an organisation. Three-quarters of survey respondents also reported that their employers did not use social media to deliver any training or development.
Jonny Gifford, research adviser at the CIPD, explained: “For the moment, the claims made by social media advocates who predicted widespread transformation of our workplaces and working lives appear exaggerated, but the impact of social media in the workplace is likely to grow as more people interact with it.
“When you look at the number of young people already using social media, it does look set to become a bigger part of how we work in the future.”
Organisations should not only make inroads in encouraging the adoption of social media, but ensure they seek out an employee voice and allow it to have an influence, he added.
In the survey, only 23 per cent of respondents felt that social media gave employees a voice in their organisation, compared to 40 per cent who disagreed.
The analysis also showed that internal social media platforms made little difference to whether employees felt managers allowed employees to influence decisions.
“Many people do see the clear benefits of social media for employee voice, but the technique itself is not going to transform your organisational culture – it is very much a question of how its implemented,” said Gifford.
For organisations to see the optimum benefit from social media, the responsiveness of managers and influence of employee voice also had to improve, he continued.
“Social media is not yet transforming employee voice, but the potential is clear,” he concluded.