HR Report: Analyzing Tolu's Conduct and Social Media Implications

This report examines a case involving Tolu, a customer service assistant at a holiday company, who was terminated for inappropriate social media conduct targeting her supervisor. The report analyzes the issues of managing employee conduct, company reputation, staff communication, and privacy at work within the context of this case. It explores the implications of social media usage in the workplace, highlighting the benefits of platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook for business communication and marketing, while also acknowledging the risks of data breaches and legal liabilities. The report recommends the implementation of internal expertise tools such as microblogging, expert directories, communities of practice, and video instruction to foster better social media practices. It concludes with the importance of establishing a clear social networking policy and educating employees on appropriate social media behavior to protect the company's interests and reputation.

Human Resources

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
Critically analyse issues related to Tolu's alleged conduct against company........................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
Implications for managing good social media practices within workplace...........................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
An organisation considers human resource as the most valuable asset to produce goods
and services in the market. They are considered backbone of the business entity as they are
responsible to accomplish set goals. The organisation grows and expands on basis of skilled and
qualified workforce. Executives, managers, leaders, supervisors and employees are different
categories of human resource involved in the company. They bring new ideas and innovation
ideas for various business operations. Further, employer and employees work together to identify
solution for the critical condition. As market conditions are ever changing in nature so human
resources are always prepared to undertake such variations.
Tolu is a 25 year old women working as a customer service assistant in leading holiday
organization. She is terminated from the organisation on grounds of making use of inappropriate
phase against his supervisor on the social networking site (Jackson, Schuler and Werner, 2011).
Although, according to Tolu it was an unethical transaction performed by management of
company to monitor her personal conversation. The report critically analyse Tolu's alleged
conduct that has been raised by holiday enterprise. Issues like staff communication, managing
conduct, company reputation and privacy at work are raised in the assignment. The report further
recommends implication to establish good practices of social media activities. Through this
analysis, it can be understood that human resources are essential for the company. But they are
required to follow certain code of conduct that maintains discipline and authority in the
concerned firm.
TASK 1
Critically analyse issues related to Tolu's alleged conduct against company
According to given scenario, Tolu work as a customer service assistant in a holiday
company. Her duty is to provide telephonic support for online flight and holiday package
bookings. Suddenly, one day she was accompanied by her supervisor to HR Manager's office to
discuss certain issue. She considered it as normal interaction meeting but later on received her
termination letter from the company (Berlant, 2011). The reason behind her cessation was a
comment posted on Facebook that was unfavourable in context of her supervisor character. She
attended late night party and due to whopping hangover she posted few inappropriate words
against his boss on the social networking site.
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The entire issue reveals that every organisation has its own culture and ethics that need to
be maintained by the managers and employees. Business entities are required to take care about
freedom of individuals enrolled in company's functioning. Instead of this, certain issues arises
which are highlighted by the company and are as follows:
Managing conduct
When a candidate is recruited by business entity then they expect optimum utilisation of
his skills and abilities. Every employee has his own personality traits that are reflected in their
work performance. When managers or supervisors assign task to their concerned associates then
they require desired output (Tohidi, 2011). The collective efforts demand for certain code of
conduct to ensure quality of work. After final selection of potential applicants is made for
specified post, the HR manager guides candidate about company's rule and regulations. They are
responsible to make concerned employees aware about respective organisation's culture.
Apart, from fresh recruitment, HR team also undertakes evaluation of current employee’s
code of conduct in the company. It is a well known fact that maintaining office decorum results
in better working conditions. Every individual feel comfortable, secured and respectable towards
other employees working in the organisation. UK government provide specified regulations to
maintain healthy and safe environment in a corporation and the holiday company in which Tolu
works also adopts these polices. She was terminated for simple reason of exploiting code of
conduct enacted by Holiday Company in its work environment (Dessler, 2016). Use of
inappropriate phase in public agitated her supervisor and finally resulted in her termination.
Company reputation
Like every individual, organisations also possess goodwill and reputation in the market.
This is essential for its existence and survival in highly competitive world. Management never
wants that a negative or irresponsible image is framed for their concerned corporation. They put
efforts to make such policies that build clients confidence in their company. Reputation helps to
satisfy expectations of different stakeholders of a business organisation. It ensures customers,
suppliers, shareholders, employees and society that it is worth enough to invest their time, capital
and efforts in certain company.
In past days, business relied on word of mouth by their stakeholders to build reputation
(Hinkin and Tracey, 2010). But in modern time, organisations are rated on the basis of websites,
social networking sites and instant communication methods. The company itself maintains and
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update their official websites by posting videos and photos of various events organised. In the
given case study, actions conducted by customer service assistant reflected bad impression about
working culture of the concerned organisation. It is already a leading holiday company and has
built positive image in minds of consumers. Such activates points and put question mark on
safety, security and comfort level of employees working there. Therefore, as she reflected
negative image or goodwill of company in minds of people HR manager fired her.
Staff communications
Communication is an important tool to exchange thoughts and ideas among different
individuals (André, Baldoquín and Acuña, 2011). Generally, an organisation adopts two form of
communication, one if formal and another is informal. Formal communication is conducted in
defined hierarchical system in the form of meetings, seminars, notices, memos, mails and
telephonic conversation. While, informal communication takes place face to face and topics are
generalised. It does not involve functions like giving instructions to employees and taking
feedback from employees. Staff communication is important factor to exchange views from team
members and discuss it in detail. But a basic principle is followed that communication should be
authentic, true and lack of inappropriate words or expression. Tolu made use of informal way of
communication and exchanged her views for the supervisors frankly and through public means
of communication. She disrespected her senior which hampered importance of staff
communication in the company. The management team of concerned holiday company give
proper freedom to it employees (Dawson, 2011). But Tolu took this freedom in another direction
which ultimately resulted in her termination.
Privacy at work
Another issue which is raised by concerned company towards challenges faced by its
own human resource is privacy at work.The management of a company ensures that its
employees do not reveal tools and techniques used to perform diffreent business operations to
accomplish defined goals.. It is general fact that there are certain information and figures which
should not be shared. Documents like financial statement, book of accounts, human resource
development plan and many more reveals internal and external information of the company. The
organisation highlights that communication of important data and information should take place
within its premises and among memebers of cited comnpany only.(Marks and Mirvis, 2011). It is
a mutual understanding concept that takes place between employers, managers, supervisors and
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company. All these issues generated the need for Holiday Company to take some preventive
action against them.
TASK 2
Implications for managing good social media practices within workplace
Adoption of digital technology in each and every individual or group activity has become
recent trend in the modern world. The growth of social media has significantly changed the way
as how individuals communicate at workplace or anywhere else. Nowadays, employees whether
working in small or large business enterprise make use of social media with great participation.
Some famous social media applications are LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Yahoo group,
Wordpress and Zoominfo. In positive aspect, these provide great opportunities for the business
enterprise to communicate with customers and other stakeholders (Schippmann, 2013).
Social media provides large amount of benefits for the organisation. It facilitates open,
frank and direct communication which develops strong relation between individuals. Managers
and employees are able to discuss their own viewpoint for certain topic of discussion. They post
news, innovative ideas, put up queries and share different links for interactive communication.
Management team is benefited with wider business contacts and they are able to communicate
with big business houses. This result in market expansion of company as social media is
considered as a promotional tool. Apart from existing customer, an organisation is able to attract
new clients present in the market (Heimerl and Kolisc, 2010). Another benefit of social media
technique is that it helps in improving business reputation and client base with minimal use of
advertising.
Despite having so many plus point of social media concept, sometimes it creates issues of
security and legal liability for the company and employees. Possibility of data hacking of an
organisation is the biggest demerit of the mentioned technique. Cyber crimes, frauds and virus
attack often destroy important information of business entity. Managers and associates fall prey
of online scams that seems genuine when taking place. it increases the risk of hacking and virus
accumulation in computer system. It is a risky task to execute and further it hampers growth
aspects of a business entity. One needs to be aware about disadvantage of social media channels
so that it reduces risk factor.
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Social media provides great opportunity to leverage deep and diverse expertise that many
organisation already posses (Aral, Brynjolfsson and Wu, 2012.). In order to manage good
conduct of social media in the mentioned holiday company they should use certain internal
expertise tools. Rather than consulting outside or third party experts, the company can make use
of micro blogging, wiki s, YouTube like repositories of learning videos, expert diaries or
communities of practice. Internal discussion boards or social media spaces allow the employees
and managers to collaborate and exchange their view and ideas. There are some effective and
innovative ways to foster collaboration across mentioned holiday enterprises which are listed
below: Micro blogging and micro sharing: Through these techniques, human resource of
holiday company exchanges information in small snippets in real time. These micro
blogging sites can be easily protected make adopting computer firewalls to restrict
hackers from violating information (Jackson, 2011). Expert directories: Another social media tool is expert directory that connects employees
to the expert of specific subject matter. The directories include information on experts'
specific competencies. Through this process, individuals are able to cope up with critical
conditions. Communities of practice: Here, certain group of individuals form community with
similar expertise or interest to sought out various operations. Employers are required to
realize that such communities change membership over time and new efforts to be
imposed. (Bates, 2012).
 Video instruction: It is assumed that visual display is a better solution to learn new
concepts or to modify early learnings. Through this social media tool, employees can
watch videos by using high definition video and broadband network. YouTube and Hot
star are two important video applications which help to acquire knowledge and solution
to various criteria.
The Holiday Company needs to establish a clear and define purpose of social networking policy.
They should provide clear platform for educating employee’s about the social media interactions
behaviour. It will help the organisation to make optimum utilisation of resources. It establishes
expected behavioural norms to make proper use of social media networking. The concerned
holiday business entity should adopt policies which are adopted by national labour relations
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board.. The managers and employees of mentioned holiday business enterprise become familiar
with NLRB's decisions (McGuire, 2010).
CONCLUSION
Organisations make effective use of human resources to attain set goals and objectives
framed by the management. The above assignment highlights certain HR related issue that is
sought out with effective decision making process. Tolu, a customer service assistant in holiday
enterprise is terminated from the company due to making improper use of social media against
company's reputation. The concerned enterprise raised certain issues that are raised on
employee’s part through misconduct. Sometimes, human resource creates negative impact on
organisation’s goodwill and reputation. Often they do not follow required code of conduct
which ultimately hinders the performance and productivity of individuals.
In order to cope up with mentioned drawbacks or disadvantage of social media
networking stated company needs to take preventive measures. Micro blogging and micro
sharing is an effective tool to execute good social networking practices in the company. The
leading holiday business enterprise should make its employees aware about the regulations
framed by national labour relations board. It clarifies a legal framework to be used for operating
social media activities inside or outside office premises.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
André, M., Baldoquín, M.G. and Acuña, S.T., 2011. Formal model for assigning human
resources to teams in software projects. Information and Software Technology. 53(3).
pp.259-275.
Aral, S., Brynjolfsson, E. and Wu, L., 2012. Three-way complementarities: Performance pay,
human resource analytics, and information technology. Management Science. 58(5).
pp.913-931.
Berlant, L.G., 2011. Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
Dawson, A., 2011. Private equity investment decisions in family firms: The role of human
resources and agency costs. Journal of Business Venturing. 26(2). pp.189-199.
Dessler, G., 2016. Human resource management. Pearson.
Heimerl, C. and Kolisch, R., 2010. Work assignment to and qualification of multi-skilled human
resources under knowledge depreciation and company skill level targets. International
Journal of Production Research. 48(13). pp.3759-3781.
Hinkin, T.R. and Tracey, J.B., 2010. What makes it so great? An analysis of human resources
practices among Fortune’s best companies to work for. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.
51(2). pp.158-170.
Jackson, S. E., 2011. Managing Human Resources. Cengage.
Jackson, S., Schuler, R. and Werner, S., 2011. Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.
Marks, M.L. and Mirvis, P.H., 2011. A framework for the human resources role in managing
culture in mergers and acquisitions. Human Resource Management. 50(6). pp.859-877.
Schippmann, J.S., 2013. Strategic job modelling: Working at the core of integrated human
resources. Psychology Press.
Tohidi, H., 2011. Human Resources Management main role in Information Technology project
management. Procedia Computer Science. 3. pp.925-929.
Online
Bates, A. R., 2012. HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES. [PDF].
<http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/c11/E1-10-02-02.pdf>. [Accessed on 9th April
2016].
McGuire, D., 2010. Foundations of Human Resource Development. [PDF]. <
http://www.sagepub.in/upm-data/36589_01_McGuire_CH_01.pdf>. [Accessed on 9th
April 2016].
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