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The start of the new year doesn’t alleviate any of the issues plaguing human resources professionals throughout 2022. Challenges surrounding isolation, overall dissatisfaction, lower productivity, burnout, dissatisfaction with compensation, and fear of layoffs abundant. But among the potential solutions that could provide relief: TikTok.
Over the past year, a special space has emerged on TikTok where people and content creators can express workplace-related issues in a relatable and human way. Now, there is an opportunity for companies to enter the space as well, according to Lynda Folan, organizational psychologist and managing director of Inspired Development Solutions, a management consulting firm based in Australia.
“Especially among Gen Z, as they enter the workplace, companies need to be agile in how they communicate with them,” Folan said. “We’re always nervous in our organization to talk about difficult things, and this platform gives us an opportunity to tell our stories safely.”
“The content on TikTok reaches the younger generation in a direct way, so the HR team can set up a space for communication like, ‘How do we deal with discrimination?'” Folan added. “Now, we can tackle these difficult topics in a more accessible way than ever before.”
How TikTok can help human resources
When most employees start a new role, they must go through several training sessions. Most of the time, companies require employees to attend in-person HR sessions or virtual HR webinars, sometimes annually, where they will hear about topics like avoiding workplace harassment, compliance and ethics training, and specific workplace safety rules. These sessions can last several hours, and are often more like lectures than interactive gatherings.
“This is not the way the younger generation communicates,” Folan said. “People can use a platform like TikTok to have a quick chat instead of a long session, sitting for three hours and talking about problems.”
TikTok videos can last anywhere from a few seconds to three minutes, allowing HR teams to quickly create videos about issues that employees can respond to and raise concerns more openly, Folan said. It also helps the HR team facilitate an open dialogue with employees in a faster way.
“We can send messages to people very quickly, without having to get a group together,” Folan said. “The whole format of the workplace has changed, with people working from home and in hybrid settings. You can’t bring people together as easily.”
When the HR team dedicates time and resources to creating TikTok content, it not only solves issues and problems faster, but also saves time for employees.
Social media is an HR career
One of the more important skills HR professionals need today is how to use social media across multiple platforms. It may be beneficial for the HR team to carve out entire positions, or even allow existing employees to devote time solely to creating TikTok content.
“We need to change the way we look at communication in general, from an HR perspective,” says Folan. “Communication used to be about sending a global email or bringing a group of people together to talk. Now your communication platform is much more.”
“Organizations that have team members creating video content specifically for TikTok can benefit by connecting with a larger and wider audience than they can reach on traditional social media,” said Andre Ben Hamou, founder and leadership coach at PeopleStorming, a leadership development company. and coaching companies.
PeopleStorming found several reasons how TikTok can help HR teams keep employees engaged, including how TikTok can replace traditional approaches to information dissemination that don’t produce good results.
The workplace is growing with a diversity of opinions, backgrounds, and age groups, and social media is helping this grow even more. For the HR team, Folan says you have traditionalists on the team who can communicate with the older generation in the company, but you also need to have younger employees who are more nimble with technology and can communicate with Gen Z.
“When you bring young people into your team, they already have a natural ability in the social media space, and are more likely to jump in and record their own videos without blinking,” he added.
Folan says that HR teams, and any team in a company, benefit from having younger employees to improve internal communication methods and branch out into spaces, such as the creation of TikTok.
“It’s always amazing what young people will say on a platform like TikTok, without question, and it’s a missed opportunity for HR teams not to use it,” Folan said. “He’ll talk openly about anything, which is very different from anything he’s done before.”
