HR Social Networks – UK Trends

Are UK HR professionals the ’social butterflies’ of the online World? Researchers monitored 2000 online conversations in the UK over September and October as part of their research. The conversations included employers, consultancies, and employees discussing HR related topics. The interesting report from CHA, the workplace communications consultancy, was based on research by online specialist Pass It On Media. It found that the tone of conversations was mainly neutral to positive which surprised the researchers who expected more ‘angst’ in the current economic environment. The report is worth a read with innovative research, case-studies from Virgin, E.ON UK and Dell, and some very useful and practical tips for employees and employers alike. Download the PDF "Conversations at your fingertips – How HR professionals score as social networkers"

The findings that stand out for me :-

1. 1. The key venues for conversation are message boards or forums, which account for 54%, followed by social networks such as LinkedIn (23%) and blogs (23%).
2. 2. Broadly, the themes covered are: the working environment & friendship at work, salaries & related issues, how people are feeling, and work/life balance & holidays.
3. 3. The top five are LinkedIn, Facebook, iVillage, Netmums and UK Business Labs.
4. 4. Busiest day for social networking about employment issues are Thursdays and Fridays.
5. 5. Social Networks are now more popular than personal emails.
6. 6. The term ‘human resources’ has been used only 13,000 times on Twitter "HR" has been used a staggering 323,000 times in the life of Twitter.

For trends in UK Social Media usage, the map below comes from Are you LinkedIn in London or Bebo in Belfast? and show the regionalisation of various social networks, as of September 2009. With Facebook and Twitter’s growth leveling off, and Bebo and MySpace continuing to lose audience it will be very interesting to run these again in 2010.

Possible questions for further research is how do other functions compare to HR and what are the trends in other countries?

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