Embracing The Social Employee

Posted on Jul 5, 2010 | 0 comments

Gone are the days of landline telephones, pagers and pension plans. In are flexible work schedules, mobile communication, and social media. Before the influx of remote communication, work environments consisted of brick and mortar offices, cubicles, and in-person meetings. Today, work is accomplished through mobile phone conversations, global web conferences and email.

Increased connectedness is the enabler of this shift caused by rapidly growing mobile technologies and the social aspect of the internet. It is this shift that is also challenging the Human Resource (HR) departments of many of the world’s largest companies.

No longer are employees “owned” by a corporation. The old school loyalty has evaporated from both sides. Pension is not a recognized word in this generation of workers and promised pensions from previous generations are in jeopardy. The result is that employees are forced to lookout for themselves. This combination of self-preservation and societal connectedness breeds the “social employee”.

The social employee does not feel indebted to her employer. The social employee uses the internet to spread her beliefs, express personal creativity, and to engage with friends and family outside of the workplace. The social employee challenges the bounds of workplace restrictions and is clearly a different kind of worker than what employers are accustomed to managing.

For example, a recent set of videos were produced and released by an employee of a large retail chain. His videos have garnered millions of views (consider this your R-rated warning). Although this employee did not once mention his employer in the videos he is now facing the prospect of losing his job.

Independent of your opinion on this particular workplace incident, it supports the fact that times have changed. HR departments are struggling to define new rules, regulations, and policies that apply to the social employee inside of the workplace. However, this is not an easy set of tasks since the first foundational question that must be answered is “What is the workplace?”