Argumentative Essay On Social Networking For HR Department.

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Write the Argumentative Essay on Social Networking for Human Resource Department.

The social networking is the popular term to be heard everywhere in the world in the recent scenario. The social networking is getting popular with the advent of the smart technology. The young generation is getting addicted towards the use of the social networking much more than the older people. There is a difference in points of view among the older and younger generation regarding the use of the social networking for sharing the information. The following study is an argumentative essay on the use of the social networking in the workplace. The main purpose of the study is to identify the differences is perspectives of the social networking in the light of an organization and the behavior of the employers and human resource department and the employees in this regard.

The main focus is to make sure that the organization’s reputation is not at stake. The organizations should ensure that they recruit the right people for the right job so that there are least chances of errors and other types of job related issues those might cost the company dear. If the wrong candidates are selected then the company has to face huge loss in terms of growth prospects and profitability. There are various elements of costs those a company has to incur on the candidates for their selection, induction and training and development processes  (Strandberg, 2009). 

Now, the selection of an undeserving candidate will mean that the company’s investments behind him are in vain. So, the modern HR personnel of many of the organizations strategically delve into the social media account profiles in order to form a general idea on the attitude, qualification and family background of the candidates those are in contention for selection. In this regard it is not out of place to mention that in Australia, the policy of pondering over personal information published on social media by the employees and the candidates in process of selection is considered as an unethical approach to HRM. 

The use of any personal information is strictly prohibited by the Privacy Act and also the Fair Work Act. The law says that in a democratic country it is the inborn right of every person to share his personal opinion about his country’s government or his company in which he is working. Therefore, if an employee shares his views against his current company on the social media, legally the company cannot take any step although unofficially the management might plan punitive measures. It is not considered to be a fair practice in Australia to judge an employee or a candidate to be selected on the basis of his social media attributes  (O’Sullivan, 2013). 

Ethical Considerations

The organizational management however have separate views of this strategy. They argue that the modern organizations work in an extremely competitive market dynamics where they are in constant state of rivalry with one another. Therefore, it is very important to recruit the right employees for the right job positions or else the companies will have to face severe consequences in terms of huge investments wasted on the wrong candidates. Therefore, they justify the viewing of the social media profiles of their employees and candidates those might be selected in order to gather information on their whereabouts, lifestyle, attitude, likes and dislikes. Regarding the current employees, the checking of what they are uploading about their companies is important to the HR personnel as they want to ensure that no false or negative information is shared by the candidates on their social media profiles against the company. Often, the candidates those are agitated post hostile comments about the organizations and their managements on these social media accounts some of which might be true. But, the management does not want to tarnish the reputation of the companies and thereby they keep close watch on these employees’ social media profiles and even threaten them on many occasions or even terminate them  (Stefan Hauptmann, 2012). 

In this issue, the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) designed few codes of conducts for the HR personnel in the various organizations. This Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct was developed in the year 2006. The objective of this code is to ensure that the HR personnel in the organizations observe the fair and ethical practices of recruitment and selection, training and development, designing compensation strategies, performance appraisal methods of employees, termination of employees and several other HR policies  (Vuori, 1997). The code of conduct clearly sets out certain ethical guidelines those must be observed by the HR personnel at every stage of their operations. If any organization goes against these codes for performing any HR related operations on the employees, then the employees have the legal right to file case against the company in the court of law. The court will look into the matter and if substantial evidence can be gathered where there was instance of breach of code of ethics by the HR then the court in all likelihood will issue punitive measures to the company and the employee might claim for compensation and damages. As per the guidelines of the codes, it is unethical on the part of HRM to spy on the social media accounts of their employees or to tamper with the personal data. The guidelines also suggest that the employees are one of the most important human assets of the organization and they should always be treated ethically. It is important for the HRM to design organizational policies in such ways as to ensure the well being of the employees  (Roth, 2013). 

Perspectives of Older and Younger Generations

In the opinion of Hammonds, an HR critique who conducted a survey on the Hay Group which is an HR consultancy company in 2007, as per the collected data, the majority of the employees of the organization were of the opinion that the HR management implemented the unfair practices of performance appraisal. The majority of the employees were also of the opinion that the management was not sensitive to the wellbeing of the employees. In the opinion of Kochan, the modern HRM has always endeavoured to be a holistic ethical system in the domain of the employee recruitment and retention. But, the system has failed to do so owing to the several unethical issues those have been adopted from time to time by the HR personnel. The HR department of many of the organizations are resorting to biases in selection, compensation and retention procedures that has caused employee dissatisfaction and diverted the HRM process from being considered as a completely ethical approach  (Jeanquart, 2011). 

The Facebook is considered to be the most popularly used social networking site all over the world. Through the social networking sites the people are found to be sharing their personal information in Facebook and other social networking sites which could be accessed by the public. The young generation employees are sharing trivial details about their personal and professional lives over the social networking sites and this is one of the main causes of the privacy issues for the people. It could be said that through the social networking sites nothing is now personal because of the sharing patterns of the users (Dagliano, 2016).

The employers are now using the social networking sites to check their employees’ updates and the HR departments are also getting the information from the Facebook or any other social networking sites about the details of the candidates to be recruited in the organization (Broughton, Higgins, Hicks, & Cox, 2009). 

The employers are also using the social networking sites to check the truth of the employees regarding any issue and also whether the employees are saying anything against the organizations or not. But according to Privacy Law the access of the information is not to be permitted but if the employees of modern times willingly share their personal information in public then it is also taken care of by the law. The employees should understand that when they are adding their colleagues and employers in their social networking sites then it would be easier for all to get the information that they are sharing on their profiles (Westwood, 2015). 

Implications for Human Resource Departments

From ethical point of view it is always important for the employers and the employees to take care of their duties and extent to which they are responsible for their actions (Burdon & Telford, 2010). The stakeholder’s theory enables the members of the organization to understand that the privacy of one member should not be hampered by the other members of the organizations. The stakeholders must be careful about the interests of one another (Harrison & Wicks, 2013). 

The old generation and the new ones are always different in their views. The old workers heel that it is not always good to be extrovert and to share the personal information in public while the young generation workers feel that one could freely share their feelings with the others if they wish to (Cowley & Sen, 2013). It is evident from the chase study where a young worker says that every person could share anything to the public with their own consent and there should not be any barriers created by others. The old workers believe that there should be a limit on the individual worker to post or to share anything that might have impact on the interests of others. The old workers believe that the attitudes of the young generations towards the policies of the privacy should be more careful. If the employees could post anything on their profiles then the employers could also get any information of their choice from the public posts of the employees from the social networking sites. The argument on this regard is always found to be there in every organization (Parkes, Scully, West, & Dawson, 2007). 

The freedom of sharing the personal information in the social networking sites must not be affected by the others and similarly this attitude should not hamper the reputation of the organization also. The young employers are seeking for the liberty but they should not also be extrovert beyond the justified limit. The judgment of individual worker is important. The workers must also take care of the reputation of the organization in which they work for not to get affected by any of their posts in the social networking sites without informing the employees about the same (Gangopadhyay, 2014). 

The HRM techniques also impact to great extent to the culture and conduct of the employees. The HRM techniques that call for the high commitment of the employees of the organization is needed to be implemented in the organization. The employers of the modern organizations are found to be taking the progressive approach to handle the issue of the ethical conducts of the employees. The employers are trying to recruit the employees that are committed to the retention of the reputation of the company. The employers must make sure to the employees that the significance of the retention of the reputation through the personal behaviour of the employees has to be kept in mind. The employees are the representatives of the organizations so their behaviour or their conduct could affect the organizations’ goodwill (hrcloud, 2014). 

Codes of Conduct

The organizations try to serve the customers with the best in class and quality products and for that the behaviour of the employees is very crucial. The employers should decide between the unitarism or pluralism approaches to enhance the productivity of the employees and that of the organization as a whole (MCMILLAN, 2016). If the employers implement the concept of unitarism then the collective efforts of the employees and managers would be appreciated for the success of the organizations. But in the current scenario it is very important that the employers understand the needs of individual employee. The employers have to understand that there could be differences in the attitudes of the individual employee towards the organizations’ beliefs and objectives (Aron, 2011). 

The modern human resourced have to be progressive and proactive in their approaches. The dynamic approach of the employees would help the employers to get the success of the organization. The employers now have to understand that the young generation workers are in favour of using social networking sites and posting personal and other information in their profiles but there should always be a limit to the sharing of the posts that must not affect the goodwill of the organizations (PEMCO, 2016). 

The management of the knowledge of the employees is to be ensured by the HR techniques.  The HR should acquaint the employees with proper training and development programs where the employees would be given the knowledge of handling the information of the organization and distribution of the same in mannered ways (Koenig, 2012). The employers must consider the human resource to be one of the most important resources of the organization and care should be taken by the human resource department in recruiting the best candidates having the requisite skills and talents. It is the duty of the employers to make the employees understand the strategies and organizational objectives so that they could be taken care of by the employees also through their attitudes and behaviour. The employers must instigate the sense of the commitment towards the employers and the organizations as it is seen that highly committed workers are found to be the pillars of success and reputation of the organization (Farndale, Hope-Hailey, & Kelliher, 2011). 

Conclusion: 

On a concluding note to the essay it can be said that the Human Resource Management in the current context has always initiated to become a completely logical and scientific approach. The modern HRM has improved by leaps and bounds by undertaking huge technological developments. It cannot be denied that HRM of the modern era is an extremely advanced procedure. However, there are several loopholes in the HRM practices like the adoption of social media tools to conduct the HRM practices in the organization. The system of using the employees’ social media accounts to gather the information about them is an unfair practice and should be refrained from as per the HR code of ethics in Australia. Employees should not be judged on the basis of information shared in the social media accounts. 

References: 

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