social media and HRM – flowingmotion

ROI of social media

Three years, London was abuzz with talk of the ROI of social media. As far as I could tell, this was just backwash from marketing departments who are challenged internally to account for the money they spend. When other functions see a funnel that goes from 1000 to 100 to 10 to 1 or maybe none, they rightly want an explanation for all the parties and lunches. When the rest of us say we are going to do something, we do it.

Rewarding what is excellent in social media

So today, I was delighted to see some awards for social media in the airlines sector. I want to be clear here. I am a psychologist and we aren’t the touchy-feely types the public thinks we are. We spend most of time crunching numbers and we know more about metrics and ROI than you might dream even if exists. Believe me, you don’t want to know how to do the things we know how to do and can prove with numbers.

What matters in ROI

But because we do know a lot about ROI, we also know what matters and what doesn’t.

We must specify a decent goal.

We musn’t get bogged down on the how.

We must

Make sure we have a goal that captures our sense of “why” this work helps us
Find measures that help us see if we are getting closer
And when we are really clever, find measures that help us learn what matters and what doesn’t.

But first the what and why in one sentence. Without that, everything else is busy work.

New awards in social media

Simpliflying has four awards for social media.

Best social media marketing campaign

Best use of social media to drive revenue

Best use of social media in a crisis situation

SimpliFlying Hero of the Year

I could imagine one more – Best use of social media to develop a community that would sustain a new revenue stream.

But there you have it. Four clear uses of social media: let the market know we are here, increase sales, deal with crises (even unexpected ones like Haiti); and simplify.

Work psychologists using social media to connect up people

Because I am a psychologist, not a marketer, I more interested in

How to bring people together who might find opportunities working together

How to create a space where people can develop working relationships that support sustained happy and profitable working relationships

How to keep the relationship brimming with ideas including a strong sense that when it is over it is over and we should all move on better for having worked with each other.

The psychology and HRM that we are teaching is not good enough

We, psychologists and HR Managers do ourselves a disservice. We train our students in technicalities. Psychologists learn to run laboratories and do stats. Future HR Managers are taught the steps of recruiting, selecting, and paying people who work as employees.

We produce drones, who have enormous difficulty communicating with other people in an organization.

Even our blogs tend to drone on-and-on as shopping lists of what to do when. People hate us – for good reason. We concentrate on forms and procedures. We know the price but not the value. We know the answers and not the questions.

I want my HR Manager to know

Who I am
Where I come from
What is important to me
Where I am going
Why I am here
What specific things I bring to the party
The things I want on and off-the-job
And not least, where I can find people elsewhere (outside the organization) who can meet my needs – including ex-employees!

As a manager, I want to hear from HR

How many people are interested in the work I am doing
Where they come from and where they are going to
Whether interest in our work in the ascendancy or in decline
New interests that are emerging
How people in the field relate to each other and how their inter-relationships are changing
And some ideas of how I can build my interests on the interests of others as they come and go, morph and change.

HRM in fast moving industries

In fast moving industries, our interests and motives are continuously changing and quite fast.

HR has a large challenge to come up with a report structure or dashboard which keeps abreast of changes and opportunities in the labour supply.

As a player inside the organization, I have needs that come up very quickly. Is the organization able to meet my demands in time to create value? What does the organization need to do in the background to have that readiness?
Equally, the people who work in my field and who could create exceptional value if we worked together have needs which come and go. How do we detect that it would be a good time to approach them and can we negotiate a deal before they move on to other opportunities?
Can we get ahead of the game by making a place where people come together to discuss their ongoing and ever developing needs? How do we invite them to join in, how do we help them to influence discussions, how can we show them how to extract what they want, and how do we help them to decide when they should move on?

Should we decide to work together in for a longer period and should we need a formal contract, what structures will facilitate the mutual journey?

Our role is to facilitate the interests and motivation of people who are moving very fast. That is what we must understand and that is what we must shape.

Do we hold up a mirror so they can see themselves change?
Can they see patterns in how every one else is changing?
Can they see ahead and position themselves to take part in the most lucrative join ventures that are emerging?
Can we keep the information up-to-date in near-real-time because the opportunities change as people react to each other?

Please drop the shopping list approach to HR! Organizations will not exist to amuse us.

We must make organizations that allow value to emerge in specific industries. Anything else is just clerking. It is close to worthless and utterly dull.

One Comment

Tag: social media and HRM

5 business uses for social media and 3 hacks to get them right

Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums . . .