Management and Social Networking
INTRODUCTION
Social networking has got a great importance in the world of business today. Most of the businesses of the world are achieving a great success through this great invention of social media. Nowadays social media has become a key factor in driving the growth of virtual organizations. In the age of globalization, most of the businesses in the world are entering in the global markets by using social networking because it is one of the cheapest ways to enter in the global market. Social networking is automating the business processes and enhancing the pace of work and collaboration among the employees of the company. It is also increasing the communication efficiency between the company and its suppliers, partners & distributors. Social networking has got a huge number of benefits for the businesses but it creating some side effects as well in especially in the communication process of organizations (Kwon & Wen, 2010; Wilson, 2009). This report is conducted to develop a training program for employees to use the social networks appropriately without any kind of misunderstanding. The benefits of using social media posts or texts will also be discussed in the report to justify the beneficial presence of social media instead of disadvantages emerged in case of wrong usage by the employees.
Firstly it is very important to address the social media policy and social media guidebook to all the employees who are using social network of the company. This will create a frame of limitations in the mind of employees. The process has designed to train the employees for the appropriate use of social media in communication and to eliminate the misunderstandings that can be created in communication on social network of the company. The four steps of training are discussed below (Shah, 2010):
- Tell and show what to do and when, and then show them how to do it:
In the first step, managers are responsible to provide details to the employees about what to do and when, and then present them how to do it by showing them with example. All the signs that are used in social networks should be defined to the employees to avoid confusions. The employees from different departments need different limitation in using social network. For example, finance employees could have more limitations to use financial information then sales employees because financial data of the company needs more security then sales information. This would be guided by the mangers with proper instructions to sketch the boundaries for maintain the standards of communication that are set by the company.
- Make it easy for the employees:
In the second step, acknowledging the employees with the company policies about using the social network of the company for the purpose of communication. The policies will define the rules and regulations of using the social network in a company’s defined way. It is the responsibility of managers to define completely the rules to the employees for avoiding the misconceptions among them while communication on the social network of the company.
- Monitoring and evaluation of employees activities:
After giving the complete guidelines and examples of using the social network of the company to the employees, the managers are required to monitor all the posts and comments of employees on the social network and make the corrections where required. With this activity managers will find the accurate deficiencies of employees and correct it immediately before the misunderstanding rises.
- Rewarding employees with the monitory incentives:
In the last step, Company should provide rewards to the employees for their clear communication. This reward system will provide incentives to those employees who will completely eliminate or reduce the errors from their communication on the social network. These incentives will encourage the employees to reduce the chances of misunderstanding from the communication. For example, the ABC Company announces that it will give a cash price of $1000 to the employees who will completely follow the policy of using social network of the company.
All the discussed steps are specially designed to teach the usage of social network of the company to the employees for enhancing the communication process with in the company.
APPROPRIATE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR COMMUNICATION IN THE ORGANIZATION
The social networking is playing a very important role in driving the success in most of the businesses. It is the cheapest way to bring the company in to the international market. Social media is using by many organization for enhancing its communication process. Posts on the social networks are helping a lot in today’s businesses. Some of the benefits that have been derived by the businesses by the use of social networking posts to enhance communication process are discussed below (Hutley, 2009):
- Collaboration of employees: social network posts allow the people to meet and share documents to enhance the communication process. This can include text, videos, audio and other functions. It saves a lot of time of communication process. For example, manager calls a meeting of a sales team by posting the time of meeting in the morning and highlights the post with the subject of sales meeting alert. This could easily inform all the sales personals in the organization.
- Access of information: social networking presence of a company provides it a platform to share the information to all the employees of the company by posting it on the company’s page. This has made easy for the company to give access only to the employees of the company. The easy access of information helps employees to approach the useful information quickly. It is also very useful when the organization needs to announce something to all the employees. For example, company is making an announcement of employee of the month so it will post on its wall. This activity will boost up the confidence of the employee by rewarding him/her in front of the whole company. It will also encourage the other employees to give better performance in the company.
- Presence of employees on the network: social networking provides the tool of online chat or communication to its users. This tool is very facilitating for the mangers to determine that whether the personal is available or not. In other words this provides the ability to the managers to locate their staff. This enhances the ability of sending the personal texts to desired personals. For example, the manager of ABC Company uses online chat massages on the social network to help the employees in doing their work and tell them about their faults in doing work. This activity by manager maintains the privacy of employee performance instead of insulting the employees by posting it on the company’s wall. It is useful for encouraging the employee towards improvement instead of discouraging him/her in front of the whole department.
It has been proved with the above discussion that the use of social networking in the business with the purpose of enhancing the communication process is very successful. All the discussed advantages of employing social networking posts in to the businesses are the justification of improvement of communication process with in the organization, but still it is important to eliminate the risk of wrong usage of social network of a company by the employees. If the training of employees is conducted to appropriately use the social network of the company then it would be easy to eliminate the element of misunderstanding among the employees in using social network of a company (Hutley, 2009).
CONCLUSION
The report was started with present presence of social networking in the communication process of organization. In other words the purpose of the report can be explained as the advantages of and disadvantages of using social networks for the purpose of communication with in the organization by the businesses. In the body of the report there are two major things have been discussed, the first is the ideal way to train the employees who are unfamiliar with the usage of social network, four steps strategy has employed for the best training of employees. Afterwards appropriateness or benefits of using social network posts or texts have been described to justify the beneficial presence of social networking in today’s businesses. Some of the advantageous uses have been defined to justify the positive role of social networking in enhancing the communication with in the organization.
References
Hutley, R. (2009). Social networking as a business tool. Retrieved August 11, 2013, from http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/pov/Social_Networking_as_a_Business_Tool_0930FINAL.pdf
Kwon, O., & Wen, Y. (2010). An empirical study of the factors affecting social network service use. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(2), 254-263.
Shah, R. (2010). Social Networking for Business: Choosing the right tools and resources to fit your needs. Wharton School Publishing.
Wilson, J. (2009). Social networking: the business case. Engineering & Technology, 4(10), 54-56.
