The Debate: Using Social Media Profiles for Employee Selection

Write an Argumentative Essay on Social Networking.

Social networking is the most popular networking sites in the current scenario. The social networking in the organization is enhancing the scope of the connecting with people from anywhere in this earth. The Facebook and other popular social networking sites enable the employees of an organization to access the personal and professional information of the co-workers and the Human Resource department gets the option of screening the candidates for the recruitment from the social networking sites. At the same time there are certain drawbacks of using the social networking in the workplace. The essay in the following highlights some of the argumentative discussion regarding the social networking in the workplace. 

The primary aim is to ensure that the reputation of the firm is not compromised with at any stage that might be an ominous situation for the firm and might lead to loss of profitability and growth. Thus, many of the modern organizations implement the strategy of selection of the candidates by searching for their personal information in the social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. This is a debatable policy because the companies are often using the personal information of the employees to judge them and take decisions on recruitment or even dismiss them from their services (O’Sullivan, 2013). In this regard it can be said that under the Privacy Act and the Fair Work Act of Australia, it is unethical to use the personal information of the employees in order to judge a candidate. This is because of the fact that every human has the birth right to put up his own views about anything in his personal social media account. He can put any information about his organization or anything if he wishes to. This cannot be considered as anything illegal as everyone should have freedom of opinion in a democracy unless it amounts to any sedition against the government. Thus it cannot be considered as a good HRM practice to hire or fire employees based on their personal information put in social media accounts (Strandberg, 2009). 

The management of the firms have a different opinion on this. They believe that in a competitive dynamic environment, they cannot afford to take risks by selecting the wrong employees. They tend to trust the character and attitude of the employees based on their social media profiles. By studying the social media profiles of these candidates or employees, the employers get an idea about their likes, dislikes, kind of people they mix with, their hobbies and whether they have put up any offending information about their companies on the social media. However, it can be argued that it is not possible to judge an employee or a candidate in the process of selection by his social media information because the personal and professional lives may be different and there is no guarantee that the information shared on the social media sites by these persons are authentic. Therefore, it can be said that the practice of employee selection or rejection by the HRM of an organization based on the information provided in their social media accounts does not sound to be very logical and prudent (Stefan Hauptmann, 2012). 

Ethical Considerations: HRM Practices in Australia

The Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) formed a Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct in 2006. The purpose of this code is to make the Australian HRM much professional and ethical. The codes are to ensure that the organizations observe the sound principles of recruitment and selection, compensation, training and development, employee performance appraisal, employee termination and the various other tasks of the HR department. The code of conduct clearly sets that the HR of an organization can utilize any strategy of recruitment and selection or other HR roles but within the guidelines of those codes which should not be breached at any stage or else the company might have to face the legal consequences if a dissatisfied employee lodges a complaint in the court of law (Roth, 2013). The codes clearly suggest that it is not an ethical practice to spy on the personal data of the employees on their social media sites or to access that personal information or tamper with them. The codes also suggest that it is not a very sound practice to judge the candidates those are to be recruited or the employees those are currently working in the organization on the basis of the information shared in their social media accounts. The law suggests that the employees should be treated ethically and they should be considered as one of the most important human assets of the organization. Their needs and preferences should be given adequate care by the HRM department of all the companies in Australia (Vuori, 1997). 

As per the survey data provided by an important HR critique named Hammonds who conducted a research on the Hay Group that is an HR consultancy firm, the majority of the employees believed that the performance appraisal methods implemented in their organization were unfair and that the employer did not think about the wellbeing of the employees. According to Kochan, the HRM has failed to be considered as a holistic professional and ethical approach to select and retain employees. There are various potholes in the intentions of the HR professionals and the HRM principles observed. In this regard it can be argued that one cannot entirely deny the fact that there are biases in selection, recruitment, compensation and employee termination those are observed by many of the HRM professionals in the various modern organizations. There are loopholes in the system of performance appraisals also those are often found to be unfair and misleading. Thus, it cannot be said that the modern HRM has been able to assume a totally just and ethical approach. In spite of several attempts by many eminent persons in this domain and even the government of various countries to observe strict HRM principles in the organizations, the unethical and unfair means are still resorted to and that is causing employee dissatisfaction and mistrust on the employers that is not a desirable situation (Jeanquart, 2011). 

Challenges Facing HRM: Biases and Unfair Performance Appraisals

The ethical point has to be discussed in this respect. Now a day it is found that the human resource department tries to access the personal details of the candidates from their social networking accounts. The ethical legislations do not allow this. The personal, non-professional and other details of the employees should not be accessed from the social networking sites. The Privacy Act recommends that the HR of the organization says that the personal and professional data of the employees should not be accessed from their social networking accounts. The Fair Work Act that has been amended to the Privacy Act also deals with the ethical issues of the employees regarding the use of the social networking sites in the work place. The privacy law in Australia guides the organization their extent of accessing the personal information of the workers in the private as well as public sectors (Burdon & Telford, 2010). The law also defines the scope of the personal information. This is unethical when an organization tries to break the norms and follows the employees’ personal information from the online networking sites. The employees also have to be careful about the reveal of any information that would impact the organizations’ value in which they are working. The employees are also supposed to take care of the interest of the organizations as per the policy of conduct of that particular organization (Broughton, Higgins, Hicks, & Cox, 2009). The stakeholders’ theory tries to connect between the strategies of the organization and the ethical standpoints. According to the norms of the stakeholder’s theory it is very important for one member of the organization to take ample care of interest if another members of the organization. The privacy of one member should not be tampered by another member (Harrison & Wicks, 2013). 

It is found that in an organization there is a difference in the ways of thinking among the employees of different ages. The older people have to say something different regarding the use of the social networking sites than the youngsters. It is observed that the employees of the recent times fail to be aware of the extent to which the organizations are able to discover the information that an employee post in their respective profiles on social networking sites. The employees who are older have some different point of view regarding the sharing of personal information on the social networking than that of the young generation employees. The older people prefer to retain the shyness and modesty in sharing the personal information that are appropriate according to them (Cowley & Sen, 2013). It is seen that a young shopkeeper believes that every individual could post anything or could say anything he or she desires to and there should no one to refrain him or her from doing so. This is sometimes argued by the older workers. 

The Importance of Privacy and Ethical Stakeholder Theory

Every worker has a different point of view regarding their attitudes and commitment regarding the privacy policies. If the young workers could access the social networking sites to share the information regarding their workplace then the employers should not also be refrained from obtaining the personal details of the employees and their respective sharing of information from the social networking sites. It basically gives rise to a debate among the attitude and perspectives of the young and older workers regarding the sharing of personal information in the social networking. Everything should have a limit and beyond that care should be taken as any activity should not harm the interest of another individual. The young workers would always be in favor of freedom of posting anything as they feel like over the social networks and the older workers would always be in favor of the reticence. The post of one employee should not affect the goodwill of the organization and at the same time the employers or recruiters should not try to gather information from the social networking sites without informing the employees about the same (Gangopadhyay, 2014). 

The modern employers are implementing the high commitment HRM techniques in order to select candidates and also for retaining them. The observation of the CSR norms of the organizations is to increase the reputation of their firms by being socially accountable and responsible. The modern organizations are inclined to serve the people with the high quality of products and services because the modern day consumers are very much quality conscious and if they are not happy with the quality of the products and services, then they will choose an alternative organization as there are a large number of substitutes in today’s market. Therefore, the organizations should ensure that they recruit the right candidates for the various job positions such that they are able to provide the best quality of services to the customers. 

This is the reason behind the modern organizations implementing innovative HRM strategies to ensure that the best possible candidates are selected. The efficient leaders must understand that different groups of employees have different views and that should be respected by the progressive employers. The progressive employers are found to follow the concept of pluralism in their approaches and that could bring the win-win situation in the organization. The skills and experiences of the human resource are important resources of the organization and that should be respected and managed well by the employers. The progressive thoughts of the employers are very crucial. There should be high commitment from both the employers and the employees. The employers must be able to make the employees to be highly committed to the organizational goals through the implementation of the practices of the human resource (Farndale, Hope-Hailey, & Kelliher, 2011). 

Conclusion: 

To conclude this argumentative essay, it can be highlighted that the modern HRM is endeavouring to become a very scientific and logical process. There has been much advancement made in this regard where the employees are being selected, trained, compensated and retained undertaking logical and scientific approaches. Thus it cannot be denied that HRM has become a much advanced process in the modern era as compared to what it was before the globalization period. However, there are many loopholes in the modern practices as many a time the HR professionals are resorting to unethical and unfair means to judge employees based on their social media credentials those are the main focus of this essay. This process is not very sound and logical as social media information can be misleading. Besides this, in a democracy, one cannot restrain the people from posting their personal opinion and views on the social media sites even if those are against their organizations. Yet, many of the organizations take harsh steps towards these employees and terminate them on unsound grounds. This cannot be considered as a legitimate practice and should not be indulged in by a sound and rational organization. 

References:

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Farndale, E., Hope-Hailey, V., & Kelliher, C. (2011). High commitment performance management: the roles of justice and trust. “High commitment performance management: the roles of justice and trust”, Personnel Review, Vol. 40 Iss: 1, , 5 – 23.

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