HR Undercover

This is a story about using too much social media at work, even at a high tech company can backlash. In this instance, there is a smart, technically savvy HR person in his twenties working for and supervising others in the department twice his age. He usually delivered desired results, when asked and he was a fast worker ended up having time on his hands. He also had a nine to five mentality. Instead of seeking out more to do, he would generally spend a lot of time “chatting” on-line with friends. Our office was in an open environment and other people had, from a distance, view of his desktop and it got to a point where other people were complaining about the amount of time he spent chatting. After frank discussions regarding expectations and what work related relevant communications could / should be accomplised using social media channels, the employee was asked not to use social media for work related conversations with employees. [He had claimed the chatting was with employees regarding benefits, payroll and other work related matters]. This caused the company to think about what role social media has within the organization and determined that it was up to the manager to decide if using social media at work would be allowed, depending on job function. In this person’s case, it did not make sense as there was no company record of the conversation, like there would be if communicating by email. And there appeared to be the abuse of time. Not surprising he did not respect the decision and ended up finding another job. During the employee’s last two weeks, his email was being monitored to ensure a smooth transition. He did not know this. And had been asked not to use social media channels, so he was sending very deflamatory emails to others inside the company as well as outside the company about his self importance, how everything was going to fall apart if he left and how stupid his boss and co workers were. He was asked to leave and not work out the rest of his notice period. Once gone, it became even more evident how much time this “smart” technically savvy individual spent chatting using both social media and email. His true workload was absorbed by others in the office without missing a beat.

The moral of the story? Companies need to address the use of social media just like personal phone calls and people who tend to chat a lot with co-workers.

They say that doctors are dropping dead like flies, that hundreds upon hundreds of people already died and that doctors are forced to write “respiratory failure” on death certificates instead of “Swine flu.” The doctors are fleeing, refusing to work, taking holidays and DYING. Reported by the BBC.

From Twitter: “sleeping with my boss’s little girl in his office…”

Posted 3:58pm April 6

From Twitter: “Just failed my drug test…”

Posted 21 hours ago

Did you read this?  The following hoax story was designed to look like a legit BBC News story — is making quite the splash on Twitter. The link to the story has been retweeted (in other words, shared on user’s Twitter feeds), at last check, 720 times.  And that’s how things go viral.  Here’s the story in case you did not see it:

There has been a small outbreak of “zombism” in London due to mutationof the H1N1 virus into new strain: H1Z1.

Similar to a scare originally found in Cambodia back in 2005 a new strain of the swine flu virus H1N1 has been reported in London.

After death, this virus is able to restart the heart of it’s victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believe to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the alert to phase six, its highest level, and advised governments to activate pandemic contingency plans.

In Mexico, the epicentre of the outbreak, President Felipe Calderon urged people to stay at home over the next five days.

There are many cases elsewhere – including the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Israel, and New Zealand.

BBC health correspondent Mark McGrith says the raising of the WHO alert on Wednesday suggests a global epidemic, or pandemic, is imminent.

In the latest developments:

• The Netherlands confirms its first case of zombie swine flu, in a three-year-old boy recently returned from Mexico. After passing away early this morning, he rose from the dead and lunged at his mother.
• Ghana has become the latest country to ban pork imports as a precaution against swine flu, though no cases have been found in the West African country
• China’s health minister says that the country’s scientists have developed a “sensitive and fast” test for spotting swine flu in conjunction with US scientists and the WHO. The country has recorded no incidence of the flu yet. There methods, however, have been uneffective in spotting the H1Z1 strain.

At the meeting of health ministers in Luxembourg, a French proposal for a continent-wide travel advisory for Mexico will be discussed.

It is unclear whether the EU executive has the power to impose a travel ban.

Several countries have restricted travel to Mexico and many tour operators have cancelled holidays.

Other members are resisting calls to implement travel bans or close borders, on the grounds – backed by the WHO – that there is little evidence of their efficacy.

The EU ministers will also try to agree on how to refer to the new virus.

The European Commission has been calling it “novel flu”, replacing the word “swine” to avoid prompting a fall in demand for pork and bacon.

On Wednesday, Egypt began a mass slaughter of its pigs – even though the WHO says the virus was now being transmitted from human to human.

We recently noticed that one of our administrative assistants seemed to spend an inordinate amount of work time on myspace.  It was frequent enough and extensive enough that it was causing some resentment to build in other staffmembers who were staying late to get things done.

As a team, we processed through the associated issues, realizing that part of the dynamic was that ”Annie” was superbly efficient and ready to handle a greater workload.  By resolving these issues together as a staff, ”Annie” learned that it is important for her to be more proactive in seeking more work when other tasks are completed.  In turn, our consulting staff learned that we could harness the power of social media to have quick contact with some of our temporaries when urgent client needs arise.

Social media transitioned to “win/win” for us as a business.  This experience brought us into a larger conversation about how we could best utilize SM techologies (within their individual Term of Service, of course).  And now being on twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and similar sites are part of my daily work responsibilities as a consultant!