New Year’s Resolution: Social media training for your workforce

The king is dead. Long live the king!

Teens are beginning to drop Facebook like a bad habit; instead, taking advantage of messaging apps like What’sApp, Snapchat, and Instagram to social network.

According to a GlobalWebIndex study highlighted in this Forbes article from Haydn Shaughnessy, “from Q2 2012 to Q3 2013 the percentage of active users among 16 – 19 year olds fell from 62% to 52% (these are active users in the sense of having contributed content), and among 20 – 24 year olds fell from 63% to 52%.”

What this means for your business is that your aging workforce comprises the largest percentage of Facebook users. Shaughnessy also reports that the “percentage of active users among the 35 – 44 year old age group rose from 47% to 53%, among 45 – 54 year olds from 43% to 49%, and among 55 – 64 year olds from 39% – 45%.”

Hopefully, by now, you have a social media policy. In 2014, make sure to conduct social media training — just as you would, say, respect-in-the-workplace training. (By now, I trust all of you HR pros have received an employee complaint about a co-worker, along with the printout of a Facebook page on which the complaint is based).

So, consider pairing social media training with respect-in-the-workplace training to address how online behavior — even “off the clock” — can still impact the workplace.

However, just as there is no one-size-fits-all social media policy, training too should be customized to your workforce. Consider not just any negative impact employee social media use could have on the workplace, but be sure to accentuate the positives. They do exist, you know.

If you have any social media training tips that you wish to share, please let me know in the comments below.

(One tip from yours truly, remind employees to adjust their Facebook privacy settings)