IAPPD Global

Social Media Madness!Written by Geoff Cook, IAPPD Late President

A resistance to change and a lack of social media savvy among senior leaders is holding organizations back from rebuilding trust and fostering cultures of openness, collaboration and innovation in their organizations, according to new CIPD research on the current landscape of social media and employee voice, launched last week at the annual Voice and Value conference at the London School of Economics.
Well, social media might have a part to play – as the printing press did when the first book was printed in 1454 – but the key is surely the message and not the medium. Some people are apt to confuse the new and trendy with valuable and effective tools. I myself made that mistake when trying to harness the power of those ‘chocolate bar’ computers (little more than fancy calculators, in reality), as marketing tools, back in the 1980’s and learned from the experience.

The CIPD advises employers to ensure that they create the right cultures and conditions in their organizations for employee voice to flourish, so that wrong doing is called out and good ideas and innovation prosper, where people feel safe (transparency, honesty and trust), valued (recognition) and involved (always kept in the loop). That is more like it.
Engaging, involving, motivating and empowering demands more than the use of the social media, which has done much to devalue experience, skill and ability in recent years (for example, every owner of a mobile phone is now a pro photographer – they think!).

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The late Geoff Cook
Founder, IAPPD Global