Rethinking Social Media
The survey was conducted online in November and December 2014 and communicated by email to a sample of members of the Australian Human Resources Institute. A total of 1931 respondents completed the survey. Responses were treated anonymously.
Key Findings
Although the average Australian spends around 22 hours using social media every week2, many organisations still lack a formal social media policy, while others prefer to ban it altogether. To investigate why, Deloitte conducted a survey with AHRI of 502 HR practitioners working in organisations in various industries and of varying sizes.
In total, only 51 per cent of the respondents’ organisations use social media sites and software for work activities. Of those that do, only 46 per cent have a formal policy or strategy in place outlining how they should be used within the organisation. The results for personal use in the workplace are similar: 51 per cent of respondents’ organisations allow staff to access social media sites for personal use at work, while only 61 per cent of these have a formal policy setting guidelines and boundaries for personal usage.
Many of the organisations without policies see social media as a risk to productivity and the business in general. Over half of the respondents that do use social media for work purposes aren’t actively encouraged to do so. Similarly, with personal use, the majority of organisations restrict the way their employees use social media, while 38 per cent ban personal use entirely. This behaviour is predominantly driven by concerns over productivity and risk management (see Figure 1), with 82 per cent of respondents believing these concerns may be or are justified.
Only 25 per cent of respondents’ organisations use social media platforms to facilitate HR and people management practices (see Figure 2). This is consistent with a US report last year surveying 500 HR professionals, in which only 38 per cent rated social media as a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ method of recruitment.
Around a third of respondents reported an incident of inappropriate use of social media that had negatively affected their organisations. They indicate the main contributing factor was employee negligence (67 per cent), followed by lack of employee training on social media (39 per cent), lack of understanding of social media (38 per cent), lack of awareness of policies (32 per cent) and lack of a defined policy (31 per cent).
Despite the low uptake, organisations do understand that social tools are here to stay. Sixty-seven per cent of respondents believe that employees will continue to use social media for personal use despite it being banned. Sixty-four per cent also report that social platforms could positively affect HR and people management practices within their organisations. Respondents cited a lack of awareness and understanding of social media (65 per cent), concern about the risks (61 per cent) and uncertainty about which media to use for specific purposes (40 per cent) as the primary barriers to using social tools. These figures suggest organisations understand that social tools can create value, but are unsure how to integrate them.
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