Employers 'failing to use social media'

15:00 10th February 2010

Businesses are ignoring the benefits of social media with over three-quarters of UK employers not having a formal policy on employees' use of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, research has found.

A survey by recruitment outsourcing specialist Manpower found many of the employers who did have a social media policy said it helped to avoid losses of productivity.

More than half of the employers said they could see no benefit to their business from social media networks.

Manpower's managing director Mark Cahill said social media was changing the world of work and that employers need to recognise this and implement a strategy that can take advantage of it rather than ban employees from using the websites.

He said: "It is important that organisations recognise this and actively lay out a policy that will govern their employees' use of these internal and external mediums, as they can be instrumental in driving employee engagement, productivity, collaboration and knowledge management."

Businesses can use networking sites to manage their reputations online, a social media marketing expert has said.

Shama Kabani, author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing, told the Sydney Morning Herald that employers could use social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with customers and to resolve their disputes to avoid getting bad reviews online.