Panel Discussion: Leveraging Social Media for HR and Allied Perspectives

Apart from having a very direct impact on core business areas like marketing, social media has also had an impact on other functions viz., HR. Since there is no directly apparent correlation between social media and certain peripheral business functions, the potential of social media has been underutilised.

Preceding the core business functions, there is the case of individual scouting and development. Social media has this characteristic of making geographic boundaries meaningless. Making the case for allied perspectives, Mr. Gaurava Yadav, founder, UPEPL said, "When a boy in Faizabad can share information with somebody sitting in Chennai, that is something which speaks about the power of social media."

It is however, to be understood that social media platforms are being customised to suit the needs of businesses. Moreover, there are several social media vehicles which aren't being developed and utilised. For instance, China, the most populous country in the world, isn't so big on the conventional social media sites. One such opportunity is real-time translation. In the words of Mr. Rohit Bansal, CEO, India Strategy Group, "Why can't a Chinese talk to us as we talk to one another?"

There is an HR perspective to social media, most importantly focused on employees. The employees are the backbone of every organisation, thus the popular tenet "employee first." Be it recruitment, acquisition or engagement, social media, in a variety of forms such as games, networking sites, has huge potential for the HR function. Ms. Gargi Banerjee, Managing Consultant, PriceWaterhouseCoopers India is of the opinion, "Social media, especially gamification, takes into account the kind of employees that are in an organisation, which makes it very effective in employee engagement."

In its essence, social media is centred around communication, and that is the key to leveraging social media for HR and other associated aspects of core business functions. Business enterprises of the future need to understand this potential capability of social meida and utilise it in non-conventional forms as well to gain maximum benefit out of it.

This post was written by Jayesh Surisetti, PGP 2013-15. He can be contacted at pgp13082.jayesh@iimraipur.ac.in