Social media could help recruit new, win over old employees
Recruiting new employees into a field service organization may be more important now than it ever has been. With older workers starting to retire, companies need to make sure they are bringing in new people to fill the gap. Forbes contributor Jeanne Meister wrote that companies recently started realizing how big of a role social technologies can play in this. The mobile workforce has already become far more prominent within organizations; it may be time for businesses to start using social media to reach out to new talent as well.
Employees will likely start bringing their own devices to work in the next year and this will change the way they communicate with every aspect of business. Everyone has likely experienced this shift, but Meister said the human resources department should likely take special note of this, as potential employees want to view listings on their tablets. She said this is the year that HR departments should create a plan for social media to figure out how they will incorporate this into business processes.
A recent infographic from BLR shows that 69 percent of HR departments are already using mobile devices for recruiting. Just over 60 percent said their use of social media for recruiting, communication and promotions will increase in the next year. As employees are hired on, it is likely companies will take advantage of the fact that they are all part of one big mobile workforce, as the BLR report found 25 percent of HR departments are already using these devices for team building purposes.
Ways mobile is changing everything
Meister noted that there are many ways mobile HR is shifting how a company has to work, including:
- More people are now using smartphones and tablets to search for work
- Employees are seeing more "gamification" of their work apps, thereby making them want to use field service software and other systems more frequently
- The use of big data is helping to match jobs to candidates before an opening is listed
A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 66 percent of CEOs believe they're not considering some necessary skills in their talent searches and 83 percent are shifting how they look for new employees to make up for this fact. Big data programs will likely play a big role in this and companies of all sizes need to take notice to ensure they are staying competitive with other businesses.
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