The Impact Of Social Media On The Workplace

The development of the different methods used to engage ‘employee voice’ strongly coincides with the timeline that businesses have endured through in the present/ twentieth century. In the UK in particular, the methods implemented could be correlated to the economic and political climate of the country at that moment in time.

Maintaining strong employee relations is vital to the success of any business. Many of the Supreme Court cases in the textbook discuss collective bargaining and union participation. These cases were intriguing because they reiterate employees’ rights to express their opinions and join organizations designed to better their lives.

Over the last two centuries the relationship between organizations and their employees have changed as the result of interactions between the two groups and in response to changing governmental legislation. During this period, labor unions arose to advocate for workers and address the inherent power imbalance between individual workers and organizations (Thornton, 2013). In workplaces were unions represent employees, Foss (2008), defines labor relations as the “ongoing interchange between the union and the employer that identifies their common and specific interests and creates mechanism to clarify, mange, reduce and resolve conflicts over their specific interests” (p. 1). The legal framework governing the practice of labor relations is

Employers initially resisted unions as they were seen as a ‘tool of worker power’, and some countries even banned the groups all together (Baoill 2011). Although these restraints have been lifted, restrictions and guidelines have been put in place by government bodies to govern union activity; and employees internationally have the right to form unions (Baoill 2011).

Trade Unions are different individuals with the common interest to come together to guarantee that their interests of work place are not affected,

According to industry research reports, the role of social media within business organisations can encourage collaboration, strategic agility and potentially improve worker productivity, thus requiring business to consider and define approaches to social media use within their organisations.

After many rounds of discussion over union’s function and influence, we can understand why management wants to keep the union out, it 's very difficult to get the potential benefits of good union-management relations in reality, most of time, they have to deal with the conflict interests. While union membership is down, unions still play an important role in improving employees’ benefits, union provides employees a more powerful voice when dealing with management, in order to get better wages, safe and healthy working environment, and job security. Unions give employees a sense of belonging to protect their interests in case they become a vulnerable party in front of employers.

This article examines union response to employee’s needs and concerns. The writers finding suggest that in the short term, unions adopted a strategy of compliance and requirement through the development of hybrid forms of voice, such as staff consultative committees. They further understand that non-union forms of employee representation may not allow employees to express dissatisfaction with the workplace because of employer retaliation. Unions, the research explain would seek to dominate these committees by ensuring that their members were elected as staff representatives, thereby safeguarding the dominance of union voice. The non-union employee representation that was created, however, was constrained as an expression of employee voice. Despite this constrain unions have actively involved in establishing representative structures that given exposure to a broader set of organizational issues than those normally covered during collective bargaining. However, where unions have been weak or entirely absent from the workplace, employers were motivated to instigate alternative voice mechanisms through non-union representative bodies in order to channel dissatisfaction, facilitate communication and encourage

In the article “Social media: young professionals effect change in the workplace” by Karen Altes talks about Generation Y using social media, both personally and professionally. The workplace is changing with the upcoming new technology that people have at their fingertips. Although, young professionals tend to use a bunch of social media sites such as, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype because they remain comfortable with technology. Karen Altes states, “As the number of workers from Gen Y grows, so too will the use of social media in the workplace.” (Altes 1). However, social media tends to have a larger impact on people in the workplace by the cause of distraction. The older generations such as Generation X are bitter towards Generation

The role of unions in shaping workplaces is mainly reflected in: first, it should safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of workers, and then unions should represent workers to sign collective contracts with employers. In the implementation process of regulations and decisions on major issues, what the union or employee representatives deemed inappropriate should be put forward to the employer, to be revised and improved through consultations (Law commission of Canada, 2004). The unions also should help to guide workers and employers to enter into and fulfill the labor contract law, and with employers to establish a collective consultation mechanism, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of workers, as well as supervising the implementation of the contract. When employers violate the labor laws, regulations and labor contracts,

Finally, companies need to restrict employees access to social media to ensure that the employer’s image, objectives and reputation are not damaged by the employee. “Employers are put in a particularly difficult position of having to balance the positive and negative impacts that social media might have on their companies. For example, many employers utilize social networking sites to locate and recruit new employees. Social media has also promoted innovative marketing strategies that allow employers to directly reach prospective consumers, unlike traditional print advertising. With this innovation, however, comes increased exposure to liability for employers, whose frustrated employees may now use social media to voice work complaints” (Long, 2015, p. 1219). Besides employees voicing complaints about their employers, many companies are dealing with employees’ posting inappropriate posts or brand damaging photos online that give the business a negative image and embarrassed the business owners. Businesses are finding once this happens they did not have a clear social media policy and the business owners are unsure if they are violating labor practices if they were to fire the employee. In 2013, a Burger King employee posted a photo of himself lying on a pile of burger buns to Instagram. The photo went viral, but was significantly tame, compared to the photos and video of Domino’s Pizza employees engaging in disgusting acts with food which caused the company’s

Social media become part of today’s life of organizational workforce. There is an increasing interest from organizations to use social media information to manage their employees. But the use of social media for employment decisions may raise many legal problems and concerns. Numerous discussions have focused on whether employers’ interests in the use of social media might invade employees’ privacy and speech rights (Segal, 2014; Lam, 2016; Abril, Levin, & Riego, 2012; O’Connor & Schmidt, 2015). This paper will closely examine three areas for organizational use of social media: (a) using social media for selection, (b) using social media for surveillance, and (c) using social media for termination of employment. Also, this paper will describe a number of legislation laws and explain how they regulate organizational use of social media.

They are listened to and the employees see that their opinions count and make a difference. Employees speak out and challenge management where appropriate. A strong sense of listening and of responsiveness permeates the organisation, enabled by effective communication’ Gennard at el (2014) p.329. Although Marchington (2010) argues traditionally, voice has been used primarily in relation to union based and broader forms of participation, rather than direct employee involvement, because this was seen as the principal way in which workers could gain influence at work’ However the CIPD suggest that there are some benefits to directly communication with staff and allowing for an employee voice. ‘Employee voice is the means by which employees communicate their views on employment and organisational issues to their employers’ CIPD (2016). Marchington (2010) also claims more recently, analysis has shifted to examine non- union models of indirect voice. Overall the employee voice has influence as suggested by the CIPD ( 2016) It’s also seen as a central pillar of employee engagement. ‘It is difficult to assess in any useful way the level of employee engagement without systematically consulting the employees themselves’ (Gennard at el 2014 p.317) As an attempt to address engagement amongst employees, according to XpertHR (2016) Employers can use engagement surveys to measure levels of engagement, which can help them to identify

This relationship of employers to employees appears to be no better than a lord’s to a vassal, a king’s to a subject, or even a master’s to a slave. Employees who depend on management for survival, meanwhile, are subject to speedups, lower wages, contracting-out, and a host of other concessions (Wells 34). Unorganized labor positions workers at the mercy of their employers and thereby transforms democracy into a seemingly unattainable, abstract dream.

Social media in today’s society has becoming the new wave of normal as today’s generation has taken over. The evolution of being connected to the world at all times has just now become the new norm. Some people look at it as a distraction, while others may see it as a major opportunity to turn socializing into a profit. Either way these raise the general question or daily arguments that people share with their debate on the topic. What are considered to be social media sites? Do you think social media should be restricted while at work? What are the pros and cons? What type of social Media are appropriate to use at work? So on and so forth. As today’s work environment has evolved from chatter around the water cooler to a series of “Likes” and “Shares” and “Tweets,” entrepreneurs recognize the influence of social media in the workplace and are looking for ways to maximize the benefits of social media in their own business plans. Social media can be benefiting to the workplace as well by promoting an educating people about different.