The Impact of Engagement and Control on HR Policy | Web 2.0

The cases and discussion so far highlight two related sets of questions for the future of Web 2.0 social media technologies concerning engagement and control. Engagement by employees with these technologies and control over their use are critical issues for organisations, which will determine the speed of adoption of social media technologies and the value they create in enhancing communications, employee voice and collaboration.

Technologies and Engagement

By engagement we mean whether employees:

• Identify with a particular technology (does it help employees express their personal and organisational identity?);
• Internalise the technology's built in values (does the technology embrace the values they hold?);
• Feel a degree of psychological ownership over it (to what extent is the technology 'theirs'?).

So, with respect to Web 2.0 social media technologies, the key question we have to answer is:

• How easy is it for employees to engage with a particular technology (or combination of technologies) to collaborate, share knowledge, communicate and express an authentic voice in their organisations?

By easy, we mean not just ease of use and access, but also these aspects of identification, internalisation and psychological ownership. Indeed, identification with technological change by employees has been shown to be one of the key factors in its acceptance. V-generation employees, as we have discussed and illustrated in some of the cases, are much more likely to identify and engage with these social media technologies than other generations.

Technologies and Control

Control is another widely discussed and contested idea in management and employee relations, especially in relation to the distribution of power between employers and employees. In the context of Web 2.0, control seems to be expressed as the answer to an important question:

• How easy or difficult is it for organisations to cope with the power employees enjoy from easy access to decentralised and open forms of communication and collaboration?