Do HR Leaders understand social media

Do HR Leaders understand social media?

I am both encouraged and discouraged by what I read in this post titled HR Leaders Tout Social Media.  The encouragement comes from HR professionals acknowledging value in social media.  The discouragement because HR professionals clearly don’t seem to appreciate what enterprise social media is. The following quote explains a lot; “64 percent said they plan to create content on blogs, websites, video or audio, while 57 percent plan to spend more time maintaining a profile in a social or professional network”  This quote is indicative of the misunderstanding within most organization about what enterprise social media is and isn’t.  Blogs, websites, video, audio and professional social networks are NOT a part of enterprise social media.

Organizations need extensions in existing policies that address social media.  In most instances existing policies are fine, they just need to acknowledge social media.  There also needs to be a rational balancing of risk vs. reward undertaken with respect to enterprise social media.