Human resource management in modern enterprise in the advent of social networking

In this century, enterprises in all facets of society has evolved by redefining the role of managing human resource to adapt to the swift changes taking place locally and globally with regards to social-networking. From the last decades society has experienced the lightening speed of transformation from the factory model media into the modern electronic media that seems to have long encompasses the digital, computerized, network information and communication technologies. Institutions, in order to survive in this environment needs to be flexible, responsive and human resource based oriented. This paradigm has led to a systematic new approach as to how human resource personnel reintegrate the processes, policies and system to reflect such evolution. Social networking has lead to critically investigating how human resource management need to change to enhance the way they perform as institutions becomes more dependent on human resource management to maximize returns and competitiveness. Human resource management in the advent of social-networking has brought with it intense competition, liberalization, development of web based technologies, speed and accessibility across the globe. Rapid and critical transformation in human resource and social-networking will continue to dominate and revolutionize the business landscape well beyond the 21st century whilst posing new challenges and presenting new exciting possibilities. This article will attempt to study and analyze the management of human resource in the advent of social networking from a business context.


INTRODUCTION
During the 21 st first century institutions have been ushered with pressures of globalization which requires them to adopt new paradigm to learn and adapt in order to succeed in the future, thus presenting change to accomplish the impossibilities in order to harness all opportunities to cultivate sustainable means for development and human existence.Human resource management in the advent of social networking means that human resource personnel must be flexible, creative, whilst dealing with complex and challenging new situations.Today's human resource personnel's need to wake up from their slumber and realized the dynamic technological revolution has lead to increase diversity, and a complex media saturated business landscape."This technological revolution will have a greater impact on society than the transition from oral to print culture" says Dr. Douglass Kellner.Human resource personnel need to recognize the critical need for developing authentic avenues or channels to germinate and disseminate information across its human resource spectrum not just for maximizing return but for developing and sustaining an up to date effective human resource base.Today Human resource personnel can't ignore the fact that they requires more interaction among the workforce from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds thus liberating workers from the insulated market place.Every sector of business has become part of the world wide economy with external pressures coming from every aspect whether it is in the form trading blocs, human right issues, eco--friendly issues or other social aspect.For the remaining later part of the 21 st century social networking will continue to significantly increase in popularity and become an integral part of the workplace culture which will harmonize or terrorize the working environment if human resource managers can or can't harness the great potentials it offers.Employees have and will continue to make use of social network in the work place which will present concerns for employers however, it's inevitable and employers can never be able or expect to bring this situation to a halt.If human resource manager are going to foster growth, empowerment, sustainability and efficiency among their employees they must embrace social networking since it is going to be there to stay.Human resource managers need to recognize the powers and the potentials of social networking by endorsing and integrating it in all aspect of business to generate cohesiveness and innovation in alignment with business mission because it help in breaking psychological and communicational barriers.
Human resource: According to the business dictionary human resource is the resource that resides in the knowledge, skills, and motivation of people.Human resource is the least mobile of the four factors of production, and (under the right conditions) it improves with age and experience, which no other resource can do.It is therefore regarded as the scarcest and most crucial productive resource that creates the largest and longest lasting advantage for an organization.A second definition from Wikipedia state that human resources are the set of individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector or an economy."Human capital" is also sometimes used synonymously with human resource, although human capital typically refers to a more narrow view; the knowledge the individual embody and can contribute to an organization.Likewise other terms sometimes used includes "Manpower", "Talents", "labor" or simply people.
Social networking / social media: According to Wikipedia, social networking refers to the means of interaction among people in which they create, share and exchange information and ideas in a virtual communities and network (Ahlqvist, Toni; Back, A Halonen, M. Heinonen 2008).
Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein (2009) define social media as, "a group of internet-based application that builds on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and allows the creation and exchange of user generated content.Furthermore, Social media depends on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share, Co-create, discuss and modify user-generated content.
Social networking Site: The technological advances and increase in use of the internet in recent decades have led to a communication revolution (Moqbel, 2012).This drastic evolution of technology has significantly empowered and redefines human existence and lifestyle in the way we communicate and socialize with each other.Social networking sites are defined by Boyd and Ellison (2007) as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection with, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) classified social networking sites into several Categories: "work-related contexts (e.g., LinkedIn.com),romantic relationship initiation (the original goal of Friendster.com), connecting those with shared interests such as music or politics (e.g., MySpace.com), or the college student population (the original incarnation of Facebook.com).Fraser and Duta classified social-networking sites into five categories namely "egocentric/identity" construction social networking sites such as Facebook.MySpace; "opportunistic" social networking sites for business connections such as LinkedIn."Community" social networking sites representing cultural or neighborhood groups; "media-sharing" social networking sites such as YouTube and flickr, and "passion-centric" social networking sites for sharing common interest such as Dogster (Wilson, 2010).Social networking sites can be divided into two types: public social networking sites and internal social networking sites (Rooksby et al., 2009).Public social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are run by commercial providers.Internal social networking sites, like Watercooler at HP, Beehive at IBM, Harmony at SAP, D Street at Deloitte, and Town Square at Microsoft, are owned by organizations for their own use inside the organization.The social networking sites -communication revolution phenomena -started becoming popular in the mid 1990s.One of the first social networking sites was Classmates, a site initiated in 1995 (Rooksby et al., 2009).Friendster is another social networking site; established in March 2003 and focused on dating through one's friends (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).LinkedIn is another social networking site; it was founded in May 2003 and has allowed professionals to create their own profiles as well as invite other professionals to be part of their networks (O' Murchu et al., 2004).LinkedIn also facilitates business inquiries and expertise requests, as well as job postings by recruiters (Leader-Chivée & Cowan, 2008).MySpace, a social networking site launched in 2003 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), allows teenagers to build, share, and launch their multimedia as well as invite friends to their networks (Parameswaran & Whinston, 2007).YouTube is yet another social networking site and was founded in 2005 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).It allows individuals to post video clips containing music, political speeches, and public events, among others.Launched in February 2004, Facebook is arguably the most popular social networking site (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).Twitter, a micro-blogging site that focuses on status updates with posts limited to 140 Characters, is a social networking site launched in July 2006 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).Some other social networking site which has not hit the international arena includes QQzone, RenRen, Pengyou, Sina Weibo, Kaixinoo1, 51.com which is reserved to the P.R.China, (China Social media report 2010).

CULTIVATING MODEST HUMAN RESOURCE PRACTICES THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKING
Companies often tend to comprehend how to harness new emerging technologies without over exploiting their true potentials.With the emergence of the World Wide Web during the 1990's many institutions feared that their employees would undoubtedly waste quality time surfing the web, so they tried to restrict access.While some did waste time many figured out how to unlock the potential of the internet to efficiently fulfill their desired return thus making the internet a tremendously viable avenue for conducting research, reaching a wide spectrum of the market, identifying potential new trends monitoring competitors and meeting cooperate social responsibilities etc. Social networking can be a real productivity booster.According to public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, more than half of the Fortune 100 companies have Twitter accounts, and of those, two thirds are using them for such productivity-enhancing tasks as customer service (Manpower incorporated survey 2009).Indeed, social networking raises real ethical and social concerns about its effect on organizational productivity, reputation and security.That doesn't mean, however, that organizations shouldn't develop and enforce formal guidelines on the use and abuse of social networking.But the focus of these guidelines should not be to try to control employees' social networking behavior, but to channel its use in positive, innovative and creative directions that can benefit both organizations and their employees.
The key is to unlock its value to the organization and to embrace its productive use.From the human resource perspective, turnover is a dominant problem affecting many organizations.A survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value and the Economist Intelligence Unit showed that more than 75 percent of human resource executives from 40 different countries are concerned about attracting, developing, and retaining future leaders (IBM, 2008).This concern surfaced as most future leaders and employees are from "Generation Y."This particular generation is characterized as a texting, mobile, Web savvy generation that requires constant access to social networking sites.For this age group, "blogging, instant messaging, social media, viral communication and social networking are as natural as utilizing the proverbial water cooler has been to past generations as a source of information and social contact" (Isheriff, 2010,).Social networking site use, in turn, can be used in resolving some HR problems by bridging "external and internal communications" (Leader-Chivée & Cowan, 2008, p. 41).This can be done through integrating social networking site use into all functions of the organization (Brodkin, 2008).Leidner et al. (2010) found out that the ability of employees to access Facebook at work was a great incentive for new hire retention as they can be socially connected with family, friends, and other coworkers in the workplace.Social networking site use in the workplace can be an important means of communication among the company's internal and external stakeholders which aids knowledge dissemination and communication (Bennett et al., 2010;Leader-Chivée & Cowan, 2008).The means of communication social networking sites can provide users with, but are not limited to, email, file sharing, blogging, instant messaging, and chatting.Those means help employees access new resources, contacts, and information, as well as maintain and nurture professional networking, as most businesses depend on team and project-related work.Several industries including tourism, entertainment, advertising, and several other service-related industries took advantage of social networking site use by adopting it in the workplace (Isheriff, 2010).In fact, 23 percent of firms do not allow their employees to use social networking sites (Brodkin, 2008).However, with the advent of smart personal hand held devices, it is even more difficult, if not impossible, for companies to block access to social networking sites.In fact, banning the use of social networking sites in the workplace can have detrimental business consequences such as stopping workers from discovering business opportunities, intelligence gathering, and working collaboratively (Bennett et al., 2010).Another worthwhile benefit of social networking use is business intelligence.Using analytical tools, companies can transform social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, into mines of market research information where businesses recognize trends and information about how customers interact with their competitor's, products and services (Wilson, 2009).One of the benefits of social networking site use for businesses is using customer communities for market research to get feedback on products and features, which can be a source of innovation in the product development process (Bughin, 2009

CHALLENGES FACING HUMAN RESOURCE IN RELATIONS TO SOCIAL NETWORKING
Several companies are skeptical of the value social networking sites use can bring to the table, and they are concerned about the risks associated with adoption of social networking site use in the workplace.According to a survey by Robert Half Technology (2009), more than half of US companies block access to social networking sites to keep employees from wasting time, but it is also in order to mitigate risk (Leader-Chivée & Cowan, 2008).The major concerns of the use of social networking sites in the workplace according to Wilson (2009) are: "perceived loss in staff productivity; data leakage from staff gossiping freely in an open environment; piracy, malware and phishing scams practiced by cyber crooks; the open access potentially offered to the company servers by lax and outdated attitudes towards passwords".Nucleus Research reported that the use of Face book at work results in a 1.5 percent decrease in productivity (Nucleus, 2009).This wasted productivity adds up to money lost to wages and economic costs in the forms of decreased efficiency.Accountemps (2010), a staffing service firm specializing in accounting and finance, reported that 59 percent of 1400 interviewed chief financial officers (CFOs) listed employees wasting time as their greatest concern of social networking site use in the workplace.Statistics show the average Internet user spends on average six hours per month on Face book, which raises managers' concerns that those six hours may be spent in the workplace (Shepherd, 2011).According to the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), employers worry, when it comes to the use of social networking sites in the workplace, about "wasting time" and posting negative contents (Rooksby et al., 2009,).According to "a 2007 BBC article in the UK," social networking site use in the workplace is responsible for "as much as £132 million per day" of lost productivity in the UK; the same article reports that "233 million hours are lost every month on social networking" (Isheriff, 2010).This productivity loss and time wasted in the workplace happens because some sites are addictive (O'Murchu et al., 2004; Wavecrest, 2006).Information security is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to the use of social networking sites in the workplace.According to the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), employers tend to worry social networking site use in the workplace will expose the organization to phishing attacks which can start with finding a user's work password, for example, the user's cat's name mentioned on Facebook (Rooksby et al., 2009).Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter are used by hackers to distribute malware and spam by hacking user accounts and then sending spam and malware using trusted accounts because users tend to open links sent by their friends without thinking of possible risks (Isheriff, 2010).This breaches an organization's security if employees click on that malicious site link.An example of a malware component is key-logging software which "records and reports the keystrokes of users, revealing passwords and other confidential information" (Isheriff, 2010).The obvious challenge of social networking site use in the workplace for businesses is the difficulty of distinguishing whether the employees are posting personal views or the views of the company they work for (Clark & Roberts, 2010).Several companies have established in their social networking site use policies, clear guidelines to mitigate such risks and protect the company and employees.For instance, IBM posts its social networking site use policies on the website where it requires its employees to identify themselves and encourages anyone posting, either inside or outside IBM, to use a disclaimer clarifying that the posting is not necessarily representing IBM's views (Patel & Jasani, 2010).Although using social networking sites to check backgrounds of prospective new hires may be beneficial to businesses, as it is a quick and inexpensive source of information, some claim it harms society in several ways, such as the invasion of privacy (Clark & Roberts, 2010).Privacy is a major concern in using social networking sites in the workplace.Social networking site use encourages users to provide information about themselves without giving much consideration to privacy issues.For instance, information collected from users' profiles can be potentially abused by social networking sites that can use them for targeted marketing (Dwyer et al., 2007;O'Murchu et al., 2004).Users' detailed information is likely vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, and abuse.Managing privacy issues poses a challenge for organizations since digital communications can be permanent as part of the system (Dwyer et al., 2007).One of the negative consequences of using social networking sites in the workplace is the consumption of extra bandwidth that affects the efficiency of core business tasks.Some social networking sites, such as MySpace and YouTube, are considered high-bandwidth sites (Isheriff, 2010; Wavecrest, 2006).

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE ALIGNMENT WITH SOCIAL NETWORKING TO ACHIEVE GOALS
Human resource alignment with social networking would involve the integrating of decisions about people with decisions on the results an organization is trying to obtain.By integrating human resources and social networking into the organization planning process, emphasizing human resources activities that support broad organization mission goals and building a strong relationship between human resource and management, organization are able to ensure that managers are held accountable for their human resource management decisions.This, especially in the light social net working and how it impacts performance which acts push to implement alignment at all organizations activities, towards achieving defined organizational goals and measuring progress towards such goals.Human Resource Alignment with social net working can determine whether the work of your human resource function is adding value to the business bottom line.The best organizations align can be done by first changing the paradigm by which they view human resource management and social networking.Managers should stop seeing human resource and social networking as a department with a budget, additional monetary burden, personnel, and tasks.Instead, they should define it as an organization with resources, cus-tomers, and services to deliver.Therefore organization executives and human resource leader need to work together to fully integrate human resource management and social net working into the planning process so that it becomes fundamental, contributing factor to organization panning success.

WHY DO ALIGNMENT?
Why emphasize on the alignment of human resource and social networking activities with organizations mission accomplishment?Basically everything comes down to demonstrating the values of human resource management to organization.As observed before one of human resource primary role is to ensure compliance with the law, rules and regulations internally and externally.Although this is still the case, and will continue to be a necessary function, many recent developments have led to a strong emphasis on results.Organizations have mandated many initiatives that have changed the focus of human resource from just compliance towards result including downsizing human resource function, delegating human resource authorities to line managers calling for human resource to demonstrate its business value and enhancing customer service.Through this initiatives, management of human resource need to become more responsive to mission related because it would take place in line level and the HR staff would be able to expand more of its energy to broader organizational issues.One of the most significant things human resource and social networking can do is to improve effectiveness, accountability, service delivery, decision-making and internal management, thereby improving confidence within the entire organization.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Social networking has evolved and will continue to do so for the remaining of the 21 st century and beyond.Institutions and corporate entities should not limit the creative and value-adding activities of employees; rather, they should develop a conducive environment to promote cultures that encourages harmony.Human resource leaders need to think outside of the box to harness the popularity and business value of social networking in order to boost organizational performance and further develop corporate goals.Human resource personnel need to be able to tap on their network of experts; encourage employees to readily collaborate regardless of their demographic location, get speedy feedback from customers on new products and services.Human resource managers need to let employees know the companies aims and objectives.Twitter, Face book, YouTube, LinkedIn and other platforms have already proved themselves to be a real asset to business.With the Internet, employees are likely to come up with some creative ways to use social media to do their work effectively.However, as with other technological advances that have transformed the business landscape-from the telephone to the PC to the Internet-organizations must adapt their culture and work practices to unleash the great potential of social media in the workplace.Social networking can be a mechanism for propelling productivity.Social networking can also be used for productivity-enhancing tasks as customer service to answer customers' questions and meeting demands and customers satisfaction etc.
Collaboration across world of work has already been significantly transformed by the growing need to collaborate and by the many technologies that promote teamwork.The use of such virtual-meeting and collaboration applications will only grow as teams become more dispersed and the opportunity to work face-to-face diminishes thus leading to the implementation of social networks.Social networks will become the new operating system of business within the business sphere and the younger generation, determined to use social media wherever they are, and soon to become a large percentage of the workforce, will demand these tools as a prerequisite for doing business.Companies have been hunting for effective ways to capture knowledge and ideas locked up in the minds of their employees.With the advent of social media, however, they are finding new and creative ways to systematize such effort thus making public sites a powerful tool for linking together "communities of interest"-groups of people connected by personal or professional interest in a particular subject matter, anything from online marketing to pharmaceutical research.These efforts can prove especially valuable in capturing and transferring knowledge across organizational levels through social networks.Companies determined to improve the value of their innovation efforts have been looking beyond their dedicated research and development teams and traditional processes for fresh ideas.The advent of social media has given these "open innovation" efforts a huge boost, by allowing companies to build channels to customers, academics and independent inventors who used to be hard to reach in a targeted and sustained way.Keeping employees intellectually and emotionally engaged in their work is critical to any company's success.Social media is particularly suited for communications intended to keep employees connected to an organization's mission and vision.For example, leaders can use social media to establish and enhance a two--way dialogue with employees, and reinforce the perception that "we're all in this together."Similarly, company-sponsored social networks can forge critical connections among teams in far-flung offices, helping ensure that employees feel connected to each other and focused on the task at hand.Moreover, the so-called "millennial" generation-now entering the workforce -will demand that they be able to use the same social media tools that keep them so well connected to their friends.
Social networks, particularly professionally oriented ones like LinkedIn, can be helpful for making business connections and recruiting prospective employees.However, in the online world, both organizations and individuals must use extra caution to make sure they are dealing with a reputable party.Promote the positive use of social media by encouraging employees to come up with ways to use these tools to do their jobs better.People love to discuss their successes, so get employees to describe how they've used social media tools in new ways to generate leads or serve customers better, for example.You can focus these efforts by function or interest, as needed.Follow the lead of so many innovative organizations and run a contest for the best new ideas.Teach by example by encouraging employees who regularly use social networking in their jobs to discuss and demonstrate how it's done.Keep track of the new ideas that flow from this kind of mentoring exchange and share the ideas and best practices.The foundation of any healthy social network is an engaged community.Let your employees help develop and enforce your company's guidelines.This approach will certainly appeal to those employees most likely to use social media, promoting trust in the goals of the guidelines that ultimately are instituted.It is critical not to insist that final policies are set in stone; instead, they should be allowed to change and evolve.After all, social networking technologies and the ways people use them are changing so quickly.Make sure that any social media guidelines are linked to your company's overall behavioral guidelines.The goal is to create a system of governance under which social networking is not seen as an exception, but rather an activity that is intimately connected to your company's overall people practices.This kind of organizational change requires careful planning and management.Leaders must understand how social media can help their organization and should look to their employees for ideas.Equally, given the community-based nature of social media, it is important to empower employees to help lead the evolution -an ongoing process to be sure.Every technological change has led to an accompanying, often slower, cultural change as companies adjusted to a new way of working.In turn, the adjustment often led to a new understanding of the meaning of work itself.In the case of social networking, these benefits are real.Only by creatively channeling its use, however, will organizations succeed in reaping those benefits for sustained competitive.
; Parameswaran & Whinston, 2007).Those customer communities can also be used for recommending, tagging, reviewing, or recognizing products, such as in the case of Facebook where customers click "like."For instance, Bennett et al. (2010) report that the benefits of social networking site use in the workplace can include enhanced collective knowledge, improved knowledge, increased productivity, improved morale (Leidner et al., 2010), sharpened strategic focus, and greater innovation.Not only Bughin (2009) mentioned greater employee satisfaction as one of the business benefits of social networking site use, but Patel and Jasani (2010) also emphasized it among other benefits such as collaboration of ideas.

Fig. 1 -
Fig. 1 -Diagram reflecting the benefits of social networking

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Fig. 2 -Diagram reflecting the drawbacks of social networking

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Fig. 3 -Six elements of human resource and social networking alignment for success