Scenarios and strategies for social media in engaging an giving voice to employees

Social media have become ubiquitous in the non-work lives of many people who frequently use these media to express their thoughts and ideas, share matters of common interest with friends and colleagues and collaborate for socially useful ends. However, evidence suggests that organizations are much less likely to use social media for these purposes, despite the positive claims made by many advocates for these media in employee relations (Dromey, 2016). This evidence gives rise to two questions that require further research. The first is: why have some organizations and some employees been less enthusiastic about the typically positive case for using social media to help them collaborate, share their knowledge and give voice to their views about issues over which they are most concerned in their organizations? Second, and following on from this first question, what options are best for organizations seeking to engage employees in using social media for employee collaboration, knowledge sharing and voice through social media? In this chapter, we attempt to answer both questions by identifying two dimensions of technology – technological engagement and organizational control – to offer a framework suggesting possible answers to these questions. Based on our framework, we analyse data from six cases, which we use to shed further light on these questions. Our analysis focuses on how power is used in organizations to control social media, generate positive and negative patterns of trust dynamics and encourage employee voice and collaboration.