Social media: 1 in 3 employees shares information about their company

Employees are playing a growing role in their company’s HR e-reputation! That’s what the infographic “Employer brand: time to e-think” reveals, produced by the digital and editorial marketing agency Parlons RH, based on data cross-referenced from various studies.

Social media: 33% of employees share information about their company.

According to the infographic, 33% of employees share information about their company on social media. That represents a 608% increase over two years! Leading the way in what employees say, 43% of respondents share opinions about management (+344% over two years), 40% discuss opinions about the company’s strategy (+640% over two years), and 37% express opinions about some of their colleagues. While employees’ sentiments are positive or neutral 14% of the time, 6% post negative reviews about the company.

How can we explain this increase? Employees have an increasingly rich virtual social life. Above all, only 29% of employees say there is a charter or internal rules on the use of social media. Conversely, 39% of employees say there is no charter or internal rules on social media, or are not aware of their existence (34%).

For more than half of respondents (60%), managers have proposed no action regarding the use of social media. Only 21% of managers have offered training, 9% information meetings, 6% have given employees a best-practices guide, and 4% have informed employees of the risks to the company.

Reviews strongly influence potential employees

Yet these reviews have a strong impact on the employer brand, which refers to the overall state of the company’s e-reputation for its current and future employees and in the eyes of all the company’s stakeholders. The employer brand makes the company more attractive to everyone, and helps in particular to make hiring easier.

So, according to the infographic:

• 95% of candidates research companies before applying.
• 4 out of 5 employees have already applied after reading positive comments online about a company
• 1 out of 3 candidates would turn down a position at a company with a bad employer reputation.
• 36% of candidates believe that the most reliable reviews of a company are those from its employees

Defining your identity and spreading it effectively on the Internet would therefore make it easier to hire and lead to more effective employees. This matters when you consider that a failed recruitment reportedly costs between 40,000 euros and 100,000 euros, according to Gwenaëlle Quénaon-Hervé, deputy general manager of the Regionsjob website.

Tools and methods exist for employees’ use of social media

Even if spontaneous posts are not necessarily intended to harm companies, managing them is now a major challenge for businesses in order to avoid a devastating bad buzz that could drive away the best talent. This is all the more important given that the infographic explains that 80% of employees are present on social media.

Hence the value of raising employee awareness and responsibility to turn them into genuine ambassadors for companies. In the United States, employee awareness programs have developed, for example, with providers of services and software that help brands empower employees on social media. On the agenda: listening to or monitoring employees, or social collaboration, such as that offered by Jive.