How social media is impacting employment relations: An examination from several angles

GORDON B. SCHMIDTASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIPINDIANA UNIVERSITY PURDUE UNIVERSITY FORT WAYNEBOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY I /O SPEAKER SERIESMARCH 27 2015

Outline

• What is social media and social networking sites?

• Social media and severing the employment relationship

• Social media and connections among employees

• Identification

• Social embeddedness

• Organizational politics

• Future Directions

Social Networking Sites

• Social Networking Sites Definition (Boyd & Ellison, 2007)

• Web-based services that allow people to:

1. Construct a public or semi-public profile in bounded network

2. Have a list of other users connected to

3. View those connections and those of connected others

What is social media?

• “a group of Internet-based applications… that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010)

• Broader category than social networking sites

• Facebook has over a billion active users in the world

Social Media Life And Work Life Overlap• 71% of adult internet users/58% of US adult population have

Facebook account (Duggan et al., 2015 Pew Research Center)

• 60% of employees report having one or more co-worker friend on Facebook (Weidner et al. 2012), 58% of Facebook users have a co-worker friend (Duggan et al., 2015)

• 25% Facebook friends with supervisor (Weidner et al. 2012)

• Countless groups connecting employees on public social media as well as internal social networking sites

“Facebook Fired:” Workers fired for their social media behaviors• A number of worker’s have been fired for their social media

behaviors

• 8% of organizations say have fired someone (Ostrow, 2009)

• Doesn’t have to be illegal actions- can be one’s deemed immoral or just not a fit with organization’s interest

The Law and Social Media Terminations

• A number of these firings have ultimately lead to legal cases

• Legal standards are being created through rulings by courts and the NLRB

• Generally at-will employees can be fired for social media posts with little legal remedy

• But workers have regained their jobs within a limited set of circumstances

• We’ve done research on this related to K-12 teacher terminations (O’Connor & Schmidt, 2015) , National Labor Relations Board rulings (Schmidt & O’Connor, in press) and are working on research across job types and legal bodies

Workers who have gotten their jobs back

• Workers talking about working conditions and engaging in protected concerted activity are protected by the NLRA

• Three D, LLC d/b/a Triple Play Sports Bar and Grille and Vincent Spinella (2014)

• State or local laws can also offer protection

• State K-12 teacher tenure laws

Perceptions of fairness and opinions on using social media for terminations • We examined young adult’s perceptions of using social media to inform

hiring or firing decisions (Drouin, O’Connor, Schmidt, & Miller 2015)

• 42% Facebook/ Twitter posts shouldn’t be used for hiring/firing decisions

• 52% K-12 teacher should be able to post picture of drinking beer during a vacation (only 24% actually disagreed)

• Only 10% thought had posted something that would hurt own job search

• So some disconnect between law and perceptions of what is fair

• 2nd data set collected looking at fairness more directly and perceptions of social media policies

Developing areas of severing job employment or punishment for job-relevant social media posts

• International perspective

• Ryan Pate made negative comment about employer in United Arab Emirates

• Arrested when went back to country- illegal to post slander of company, faced 5 years in jail

• Different laws, different protections/liabilities

• Doesn‘t have to be employer termination

Employee-employee connections through social media

• With workers connected to co-workers through social media we need to know more of how such connections are used

• Who makes such connections? With whom?

• Why make connections?

• How do co-workers interact?

Social Media for identification and connection• Social media can be a way for people to connect

with co-workers and their shared identities and values (Schmidt & Landers, 2010)

• Engage in sense-giving sense-making related to identity

• Sense-giving• Organization or leaders give information about what is

important or relevant to identity to members or followers

• Sense-making• Members discuss together what it means to have the

identity or membership

Social Media and work embeddeness

• Schmidt, Lelchook, Martin (2011) looked at how the % of Facebook friends who are co-workers relates to workplace outcomes in sample of 106 unionized retail employees

• Greater % of co-worker friends, greater perceived organizational support

• Greater % of co-worker friends, greater organizational spontaneity

• Total number of friends and co-worker friends related + with turnover intentions

Social media and worker organizing • Recent data w/ Drouin + O’Connor of students

• Looked at how number of Facebook co-worker friends relates to organizational justice perceptions

• > co-worker friends, < perceived organization justice

• Negative correlation w/ distributive, interpersonal, informational

• Could be like Triple Play legal case- talk to other workers online to see if similar issues or perceptions

• Could also be related to – peer comparisons

Social media and organizational politics

• Currently finishing a book chapter on topic

• Use social media as a medium for political actions

• Building social connections

• Impression management

• Controlling information

• Ingratiating/exchanging favors

• Also perceptions of politics

• Is co-worker kissing up?

• Is it a social or political connection?

Developing areas for employee-employee connections

• Different uses for sites

• Why use social media site?

• Different use, different behaviors

• Privacy Settings

• Sites differ in how privacy is managed

• But generally people don’t use privacy settings

• Loosely connected Internet workers

• Communities around sites like Amazon Mturk

• What requesters can be trusted, provide good value, etc?

How can an organization steer social media behavior?

• Area in need of greater research and theory on impact

• Some potential avenues

• Social Media Policies• Help inform workers what posts are appropriate or not

• Only around 50% of organizations have one

• Through company social media• Organization run social media sites public or internal

• Guide how employees engage in social media potentially

• Provide tools for collaboration or discussion

Future Research Directions

• More proscriptive versus descriptive work

• What factors have impacted versus documenting existing reality

• Experiments or quasi-experiments would be helpful in this regard

• Longitudinal research

• How do social media connections impact work outcomes over time?

• How do social media interventions have impact?

• International research

• What are country effects?

• How does social media use and function differ by culture?

Any Questions or Comments?

•This presentation can be found on Slideshare:

•You can also email me at: schmidtg@ipfw.edu

•Or message me on LinkedIn:

•https://www.linkedin.com/pub/gordon-schmidt/13/a90/891