Failure to Plan, is Planning to Fail

— Benjamin Franklin.

The impacts of social learning within organizations has grown tremendously, with the explosion of technology and social media in recent years.  Many organizations now understand that current society demands that individuals are able to do things on the go.  With the rush to get everywhere all the time, there is a definitive need for many business dealings to be conducted on the go, preferably via social media.

This brings into focus, the need for many organizations (i.e. banks, providers of goods and services), to now ensure that they have the ability to conduct business via social media.  In order to maintain this presence with their customer base, organizations must first ensure that their employees understand social media and specifically the use of social media as it relates to operating social media for business purposes.  Learning and Development teams need to begin to adapt and incorporate social media tools as a part of everyday training.  Utilizing social media for learning, can bring about a level of excitement around learning. Learning utilizing social media can have the following benefits:

Understanding, that with the adaption and usage of social media within the corporation, comes responsibility. Employees must learn the difference between utilizing social media for their personal use vs. utilization of social media for business purposes.  Training teams need to establish their comfort levels sooner rather than later with social media and begin to incorporate social learning practices into regular company learning.

With any tool that can be utilized for both professional and personal usage, it is imperative that guidelines be adapted, learned and adhered to for the benefit and protection of the user as well as the organization utilizing the tool.  There should be a committee in place to establish and ensure guidelines are followed and establish penalties for violations of the guidelines.  Within this committee, we suggest that that “champion” be appointed to communicate directly with upper management regarding the status of review committee, successes, as well as opportunities noted.  This will prove to champion to causes of successful social media usage by providing an example of proper usage. (Jacka and Peter, 2019).  Best practices established and utilized from the top down while create an atmosphere of compliance.  Employees with begin to feel that they are truly “brand ambassadors” for the company and will become more conscious regarding their utilization of social media.

Responsibility and Usage

Social media keeps us connected, utilizing social media within organizations, will only prove to bring those individuals closer.  Building and establishing Personal Learning Networks (PLN), as the result of social learning creates the space for relationships to be built and established with “likeminded” individuals. A place to receive or pass information can be crucial to ones success. On the other hand, organizations must ensure that there is a firm and clear understanding of proper usage. Lack of this piece within the organizational training component, can prove to be a costly error for the organization to make in the future.

Yammer, a tool used by organizations created specifically for business purposes. Microsoft based, it is not a tool that would add an astronomical amount to the companies bottom line budget. Yammer allows small communities to be built with the purpose of increasing one’s network. Updates are provided directly on the company network.

Companies are beginning to utilize social media more and more.  As employees within organizations begin to utilize social media daily for business use, it is easy for lines to get blurred.  One “innocent” post may lead to another and another.  Employees may begin to “log in” just to see or like a post and this becomes commonplace.  Establishing a policy with guidelines for usage is the best way to ensure rules are followed.  It is also up to each employee to not only govern themselves but watch their team members around them for inappropriate use. This does not that team members become the “social media police”, but it should open conversations regarding proper usage. 

References

Jacka, J. M., & Peter, S. (2019, October). Social Media Governance. Internal Auditor, 76(5), 50-55. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=93768524-5a5a-4cb0-af53-6490b6eaa8b7%40sdc-v-sessmgr01

Bahadir, B. (2016, November). Evaluation of Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Media as Key Source of Strategic Communication. Social and Behavioral Sciences, (). Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=5944c7b0-e5fb-4550-a6a6-406fc7ed044c%40pdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPXNoaWImc2l0ZT1lZHMtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=S1877042816315609&db=edselp

Dreyer, S., & Ziebarth, L. (2014). Participatory Transparency in Social Media Governance: Combining Two Good Practices. Journal of Information Policy, (), 529-549. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1749156835?accountid=