Surprising HR Concern That Affects Your Project

 

Here is a list of the top policy issues HR professionals see as their biggest challenges in 2013. See if you can find the top one. The top challenge is not just slightly ahead of the others, it is far and away ahead of the others.

• Cell phone use and distracted driving
• Attendance and punctuality
• Social media
• Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
• Computer and Internet

The FMLA has been making news for years, but that was listed as a top challenge by only 15.9%. The same percentage was added as computer and internet. Attendance and punctuality, a perennial concern, is just slightly more worrisome at 17.4%. It was surprising to me to see that cell phone use and distracted driving is the second biggest challenge on the list at 21.6%. Perhaps they are concerned that work-related accidents or deaths may come back to haunt the employer in the way of lawsuits.

The Big Concern, however, turns out to be social media policy, identified by 47.1% of HR professionals. It has long been known that executives add these features cautiously and many close them down when anything controversial occurs in the discussion (which usually occurs in about the first week).

What does this mean to you? Expect HR professionals to be updating social media policies soon. If you are a project manager who uses social media to make your projects work better, then you have to be cognizant of this concern and manage your workforce accordingly to maintain the benefits of social media.

• Make sure you know the social media rules, old or revised.
• Make sure everyone takes training provided by HR or learns otherwise about proper and improper use of social media.
• Have a discussion with your project workforce about what is constructive at work vs. what is acceptable in the "outside" social media world. There's a big difference.
• Make a special effort to ensure discussions are not abused, but that they remain open to diverse viewpoints.

FYI:  The BLR infographic on this topic.