Managing People - Reflection on Privacy, Social Media and Recruitment

This reflection discusses the impact of social media on privacy and recruitment, negative effects of social media in selection and recruitment, and the importance of communication, motivation, time management, and teamwork in managing people.

Running head: MANAGING PEOPLE - REFLECTION
Managing People - Reflection
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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PART 1
Privacy
Privacy is essentially the act or the concept of being isolated and away from the public eye and
without the boundaries of public attention and it also sometimes involves the act and
responsibility of behaving in a selective manner with different cohorts of people in the context of
social life. The boundaries of privacy differ and vary from people to people is what we found and
also among different sectors and cultures in different parts of the world. In this assignment the
impact of social media usage and activities by employers during work hours is determined and
evaluated in this paragraph (Westin and Ruebhausen 2015). We noticed of late that with the lack
of conditional requirements for the employers unlike the government, they are able to and in
many cases are found to monitor and regulate the social activities of the employees. This though
considered legal and depends highly on the policies and rules of the organization about the same,
is completely and most definitely unethical. Employers are specially informed to use the private
information and posts of employees after they resign to know about the next corporate steps and
the negative reviews about the firm that they were previously associated with. The act of
regulating the social media activities of the employees with the help of their social media
accounts, messages or even usage of company cars during non work hours is considered to be
policy better known by the name of Big Brother Policy. The usage of this policy varies from firm
to firm and essentially should be confined only to the usage of company devices as monitoring of
personal information from personal accounts is both unethical and unproductive.
According to the video we used for drawing inference on the issue we found that even though
60% of employees involved in working with firms and organizations operating in the corporate

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sector use social media during work hours throughout the day, the company and the employers
should not encroach upon the privacy of the employees. Effective reduction of the use of social
media during work hours according to us should be incorporated with the help of two sets of
policies. The first set of policies should aim at reducing the amount of regulation, monitoring and
surveillance of the private information used by employees for usage of social media. The second
set of policies used by the firms should aim at bettering the position of the employees and the
rank of the firm in the target market and among the customers by efficient use of social media for
business purposes including marketing, advertising and communicating.
The breach of privacy by the employers of the employees sometimes happens to the extent that
the families of the employees also get involved and the up rise of such situations should be
effectively avoided at any cost by the employers and the employees too. To prevent the
occurrence of any such events or advent of such scenes educational and social media workshops
should be provided by the government to both the employees and the employers. Further, the
employees should be provided with exclusive training and workshops in the context of social
media etiquettes especially when it comes to the context of sharing company information
(especially sensitive and private company information). Thus, the maintenance and regulation of
privacy is a two way process that involves trust and a sense of security in between the employee
and the employer. Hence the employee should take care of the privacy of the firma and the
employer should be concerned about the protection and the security of the employee in terms of
his or her social life and other aspects of work during the work hours instead of encroaching
upon and breaching the privacy.

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Negatives of social media in selection & recruitment
Social media platforms in the form of social media websites or modes of communication have
immense impacts on the corporate life of individuals, especially in the context of selection and
recruitment of employees in certain firms and organizations. The use of the content of social
media of the employees during the time of their employment and especially their private
information or even their earlier posts is both unethical and against the norms and regulations of
social media etiquettes (Brooks 2015). The firms should make sure that no background
information or personal information posted by the employees in terms of the race, religion,
gender or ethnicity are used to determine the suitability of the employee to the position that he is
being hired for.
Further one of the other principles that we thought was essential for firms and employees to
follow in terms of management of employees and also their hiring so that they do not end up
spending time with social media while working or other modes of shirking is the appropriate
measures pertaining to job design and transparency of information about the roles and
responsibilities of the employees at the time of their selection or recruitment process. The
employees should feel heard, engaged and involved with the firm both at the time of recruitment
and also during their course of work with the firm. The feeling of being heard and provided
importance should also be inculcated in firms in order to avoid the negative impacts of social
media on recruitment and selection processes of firms. Instead of judging the candidates in the
interview on the basis of their prior social media posts based on their origin or prior work
experiences posted on their social media accounts, the employers and recruiters should
increasingly make sure that their self esteem is valued first and foremost followed by a
propelling of the sense of belonging in the firm. We know that the employers are disturbed due

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to overuse of social media by employees that in turn cause reduction of productivity. However,
monitoring and keeping the social media activities of the employees under surveillance should
not be used as a measure of increasing productivities or decreasing misconduct.
Sometimes when social media platforms are used officially for the process of hiring, they might
cause miscommunication and misinterpretation of information in between the recruiter and the
candidate being interviewed. The job performance and the opportunities available to the
employees also reduce because of the wrong signaling method used and given out by the social
media websites and platforms. A proper face to face interview and conversation is always the
most effective measure in the process of selection and hiring. The issue of trust among the
employees and the employers is a matter of mutual concern and effort and this should be focused
on and monitored by the employers with the help of proper policies, regulations and trainings in
place.

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PART 2
Communication is the process of dealing with other people through the exchange of information
by different means of communication. The means of communication used to connect to other
people generally depend on the purpose and the channel which makes the flow of information to
the recipients easier (Stüber 2017). In other words, it is the process by which conveying or
imparting of knowledge or information is carried out. The means of communication used for our
group study was Whatsapp as it is the most easy and convenient to use and we could either
exchange information through messages or could even exchange pictures, videos as well as
relevant information in the form of PDFs.Good communication and efficient transfer of
information is very important for any kind of group work or assignment as it helps in remaining
updated about the work being performed and progress of the other people in the group. Similarly
in our case, communication in an effective manner helped us to gain insight and knowledge
about how the others were performing and how we could cooperate and collaborate the different
parts of the assignment to reach a cohesive structure and a meaningful conclusion. In our case,
especially knowing and working on the different views of the different members about the same
videos and issues was also very important. This helped in understanding and generation of
different perspectives of the different members in our group and how the different idea could be
channelized into the same direction was also decided.
Motivation is a strong deciding factor behind the actions, needs and target achieving mentality
and mindset of different people. It is the most important and crucial factor that helps in pushing
forth the already existing level of efforts on part of people and helping them achieve better

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results in most cases (Wlodkowski and Ginsberg 2017). The need and demand of motivation is
very different for different purposes and scenarios. For us in particular, the quest for knowing the
impacts of social media on the privacy of users and also on the recruitment process was
important and formed the most crucial form of motivation for us. Motivation forms a very
important source of enthusiasm and inertia to work harder in many circumstances and so did it in
case of our assignment and group work. The fact that we were exploring a newer dimension to
the effects and impacts of social media and implementing the same in our course of study made
it even more interesting to deal with and provided us with the force that propelled both our speed
and productivity. Motivation also helped us to provide quality work so that it adds to the already
existing knowledge base that we already had. In other words, the form of motivation that worked
in our case was situational motivation and this helped us to learn and grow in a group study and
classroom environment.
Time management is a very important aspect of both learning and working that is inculcated in
individuals from a very young age and helps in completing the duties and responsibilities on time
and with precision (Kirillov et al. 2015). In other words, it inculcates the habit of accountability
and management of stress and helps in easy reaching of targets. Efficient time management is
performed generally with the use of different concepts of planning and decision making,
especially in case of a collaborative project or joint management of any task or assignment. In
our case of group assignment and project completion, we manage time and planned the
completion of the project at hand by using a schedule as well as a framework that formed the
road map to the completion of the task and reaching the objectives. For us, particularly time
management and planning was very important and essential because it was a group work that had
to be performed by different people on different parts and then all of us would have to meet and

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decide on the cohesive structuring of the topic so the assignment has effective flow of
information. Further, our timings of working varied depending upon the other assignments and
other activities that were prioritized in different ways by different people in our group. Planning
was inevitably important because it helped us in forming a structure, schedule and framework as
to how much work one should have completed within which time frame and this again helped in
easy achieving of targets and objectives and on time.The concept of team work is very important
as it helps in efficient distribution of work depending on the strengths and weaknesses of
different people and enables a particular amount of work to be completed in a given amount of
time. In our case also it helped us in reaching objectives easily and on time.
Social Media in this context has been shown in a perspective that highlights the negative impacts
of using it especially during work hours. Attitude also forms a very important source and factor
of deciding whether the employers and employees approach decision making and problem
solving matters related to the use of social media in the same and collaborative way or their
perspectives differ causing mistrust and loss of conduct on part of both the employers and the
employees. All these issues were looked into and discussed in greater detail by our group and is
summarized in the first part of the assignment.

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References:
Brooks, S., 2015. Does personal social media usage affect efficiency and well-
being?. Computers in Human Behavior, 46, pp.26-37.
Kirillov, A.V., Tanatova, D.K., Vinichenko, M.V. and Makushkin, S.A., 2015. Theory and
practice of time-management in education. Asian Social Science, 11(19), p.193.
Stüber, G.L., 2017. Principles of mobile communication (Vol. 3). Springer.
Westin, A.F. and Ruebhausen, O.M., 2015. Privacy and freedom. Ig Publishing.
Wlodkowski, R.J. and Ginsberg, M.B., 2017. Enhancing adult motivation to learn: A
comprehensive guide for teaching all adults. John Wiley & Sons.