The emergence of Online Social Media

Episode 5: Monday, May 3, 2010, 8:06 pm
I remember some years of my childhood when I was probably 13 & I had this special subject added in curriculum of seventh standard that year. It was Computers. After making an impact on western world, it had arrived in India and was creating waves. Many private & some government firms were transforming themselves from the legacy system to more profound IT infrastructural system. At that time, having the knowledge of computers was seen as something extra-ordinary. Parents used to send their children to computer classes in summer vacations instead of hobby classes. Personal computer was replacing TV in home for the mode of entertainment for children. Then there was internet which changed the way companies do their business. But year 2001, brought the much hyped havoc on the businesses all over the world with very infamous Y2K threat. Some IT specialist termed it as 'dot-com bubble' (web 1.0), but many other see it as a turning point for the internet.

After the burst of dot-com bubble, the second generation of internet emerged, coined as web 2.0, as it moved from personal website to blogs & forums, from publishing to participation (from read only to write too), & from content management to tagging (folksonomy versus taxonomy). This change was mainly due to the technological refinements like broadband, improved browsers, Ajax, widgets like Flickr & You Tube. It later led the dawn of Social networking whose widespread applications can be seen in the form of online social media.

What is Online Social Media?

Consider the media like newspaper, radio, television or some other website which are mainly one sided means of communication where audience are only passive recipients. On the other hand, Online Social Media provides a platform for community collaboration for active conversation & sharing of ideas, basically interaction. This social media involves networking which is soul of any successful business, where one get the ability to reach to the audience and the audience can get in touch with the other party real time. Definitely it requires a great commitment and knowledge of the market to tap the right customers out of the myriad available. To post regularly, to keep an eye on market to get the visitors on site & the right use of web 2.0 features are the requisites.

Why Online Social Media is so famous?

1. Form relationships for all purpose: Personal, Business etc. Imagine for your business how many people can you meet in one day personally and now compare it with the number you can meet through social networks. SAVES TIME
2. Real time information sharing: Online social networks allows both the parties to share the information almost real time. It helps both the parties to complete the transaction early. And they can get in touch with each other virtually.
3. Reviews & Forums: Online social media provide a strong platform to discussion. Have you ever liked a particular restaurent or an apparel store? Want to tell someone? Try social bookmarking! Take feedbacks of your customer anytime.
4. Video pod-casting: Online social media allows you video pod-casting on the go. Imagine the situation when a customer wants some information for your product and instead of sending him brochure on his mail you upload a video which not only explains the features of the product but also the ways to use it. Incredibly interesting..!
5. Long-lasting relationship: Today is the era of e-business. want a long lasting relationship with your customer at distant land? Make a community/page on Orkut/Facebook & get in touch with him instantaneously.
6. Inexpensive & easy to launch: Unlike other media, social media is inexpensive and easy to launch. It doesnt need any specialized people to back. All you need is to be a little tech-savvy & ofcourse garrulous.
7. Wide reach: Online social media allows you to get in touch with everyone; buyers, peers, competitors, vendors. It helps you to reach the people you may one day need to sell or work or anything.

Issues with online social media
The most difficult part of marketing through online social media is the active participation & to maintain the multiple networks simultaneously viz. twitter, Facebook, Orkut.
Privacy Issue: Too much of information available on social networking sites sometimes can turn damaging the faith of customers specially when the host doesn't take sufficient steps to protect users' privacy. Third parties are always very active to steal the information of the users.
There is a high risk of misuse of online social networks where a third party can make a duplicate profile of patron which can mislead others.

HRM & its responsibilities

Episode 4:Saturday, 1 May 2010, 8:06 pm

Being an MBA, I got the chance to learn the different aspects of management in the light of Planning, Staffing, Organizing, Budgeting & Controlling which basically touch the various edges of a successful organization to bring the synchronization between various departments like Finance, Marketing, Operations, IT & Human resource. Out of all these departments and the activities of management, I consider that the HR department holds the utmost importance. Today is the era of technology but its man who runs machines. If a person clicks Ctrl+S for any document, it will always save the document. But if an executive asks his subordinate to do a particular task, then chances are there that he may or may not do it as expected. So HR skills become a major requisite to run any organization successfully.

Consider this words similar while reading the rest of the post: Organization, Employer, Firm, Company.

Role & responsibilities of HR
Manpower planning
Recruitment
Staffing
Induction to new joiners
Training
Performance appraisal
Promotions, Transfers & Demotions
Retirement

Apart from the above stated responsibilities, some other important responsibilities which most of the time are forgotten, viz. employees' welfare, icebreakers, fun at work career growth etc.

Successful are those companies which can strike a perfect balance between the organization's growth along with the career growth of its employees. HR planning is a puzzle therefore the best minds should be roped in for the task or not some self-proclaimed management gurus should take the responsibility. It is a two way street- starts with the basic functions of HR bulleted above & takes a U-turn towards employee welfare. During my MBA days, I read several case studies which clearly depict the need of this balance & how few companies failed in the absence of this balance and had to put a full stop to their operations. Employees are not the fixed assets, but only the current. Many companies just believe to tire & fume out its employees' potential but I wonder can any organization work successful without 'a happy & satisfied employee'. This negligence leads to higher attrition in most of the companies in India ranging from IT to education. Many successful organizations like Infosys, Google etc. have very well designed HR policies & compensation plans.

Today most of the executives fight with the over burden at work place. In addition to this their remuneration is not justified at times. Any employee joins a particular organization with many dreams. Obviously he expects personal growth with challenging tasks. But to his surprise, he mostly ends up in searching a new job in an year or two, thanks to the ill strategies of the leading business people of the organization. This scene holds true mostly for the freshers. The trend prevailed for few years in IT industry & to my fear it has started swallowing some others too. Remember, though a fresher is inexperienced but he is the most enthusiastic guy working. A little right mentoring, a little right direction along with a good compensation can account for a long lasting relationship between an employee and the employer.

Therefore a good HR policy should consider these three points:
1. Capacity: Figure out the capacity & the potential of an employee
2. Opportunity: Try to give the best available & challenging opportunity to the employee at the
work place according to the potential of the employee
3. Motivation: Keep motivating him to give the best results

An employer should encourage a proper dialogue between its employees & himself. here I would also like to connect the above scene with the ill strategies that a company can adopt in order to satisfy its urge to grow exponentially overnight. These strategies can be in the areas of marketing & advertising, tapping the employee's potential wrongly (by assigning a less challenging job to a worthy employee which will definitely lead to a wrong performance management). In this situation, the employee will work only for some time but a professional always looks for challenging tasks & responsibilities where he can grow with the organization. Sometimes in order to grow, many organizations enterinto expanding its opertions to the extent (mostly by diversifying their portfolio) that they end up in diluting the the brand image of their previous products & services aswell. One should never forget that each element of the portfolio should provide the maximum value proposition to its customers. In the scenario when a company forgets to 'walk the talk' i.e. fulfilling the promises made, they not only end up losing their existing customers but also the faith of the prospecting & sometimes employees as well. This only lead to lower margins and losses. Most of the companies facing this situation close down their operations to lower the operating costs & even sometimes layoff employees.

So the basic message is 'walk the talk' (Consider it for both- the customers and the employees).

A candidate seeking job with any company should therefore do a rigorous research about the organization & its HR policies. Online social media has become a boon for such primary researches and candidate can get in touch with the existing employees of the firm. ( See the magic of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook & Orkut). In addition to this, an applicant should give proper attention in providing the true information about his qualifications & work-experience and should give preference to document every single dialogue with Human resource Department, leaving no room for misunderstandings.

An employer should give proper attention in maximizing the minimum available potential of an employee and minimizing his maximum anxieties. It will help to create a long-lasting relationship between the employer & the employees- A key to the exponential growth for any firm.