Been meaning to do this since our conference on Jan 18th - it's now February 2nd, apologies, as well as being extremely busy, I've also been bogged down by one of those annoying winter colds!
Blogs and the rise of 'nano-publishing' could have a massive impact on employer brands and the way that employers communicate with employees and candidates - here's how...
The term 'blog' (a website in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis) was first coined in 1997 and by the end of 1997 the first blog host, Xanga, hosted 100 online diaries. By the middle of 2005 there were over 70 million blogs worldwide. Add to this other trends - peer to peer reviews on ebay, Wikipedia, Flickr and RSS and you get an online revolution! What we read on the internet is no longer determined by large mutli-national media organisations, but by 'nano-publishers', individuals, who through the low cost of entry and ease of use, can write anything about any topic online.
This is potentially very significant for employers as for every corporate careers site (through which an employer is portraying their view of working at their company) there could be a corresponding blog (giving the 'real' view from an employee's perspective). If these two views conflict then employers might find it harder to recruit and retain employees and their investments in corporate recruitment sites and establishing employer brands could all be for nothing.
If this all sounds a bit far fetched then here are a couple of examples of blogs impacting on large brands and employers
- Ellen Simonetti was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines in the US and was suspended and then sacked by the airline after her blog - Queen of the Sky - included a photo of her in uniform that Delta felt was innappropriate.
- The spouse of an employee at Electronic Arts blogged about her partner's working conditions at ea_spouse. A senior VP at EA then issued an internal memo that acknowledged that 'reading blogs...has been hard...we will fix these issues'
- Joe Gordon's blog Woolamaloo made references to his employers WaterStone's and called his manager 'Evil Boss'. After reading this Waterstone's dismissed him for bringing the company into disrepute even though he was a model employee of 11 years and had offered to stop blogging.
For every site like the Training and Development Agency for Schools or Met Police Careers there will be a ranting teacher or a policeman's blog. So how are employers going to deal with this new trend?
The first thing to do is don't panic - reacting badly to an employee that blogs could do more damage than good and blow up in a sea of media coverage. Secondly, monitor what is being written and where possible take steps to address any genuine grievences. Next, develop blogging policies, it's unlikely that employers will ever be able to stop employees blogging, but it should be possible to develop guidelines (similar in scope to company email usage guidelines) that clearly explain what employees can expect if they blog about their employer. Most importantly, employers should plan for the future - blogs are big and they're getting bigger - 20 years ago no one would have imagined that email and mobile phone usage would have been what it is today and who knows how far blogging and nano-publishing will take us?
The most important thing for me is to realise what exciting times we live in - blogging, wikipedia, podcasting etc really reminds me of when I first got involved in the internt in the mid-90's - a lot of things that we promised then are finally being delivered now - like freedom of information and quick technology - the internet really is a beautiful thing!
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