One in five job seekers say they would turn down a job if it did not provide access to social media such as Facebook, according to a paper released by recruitment giant Hays yesterday.
A survey of 870 employers and job candidates for the white paper, Tomorrow's Workforce, found that half of candidates already access social media for personal reasons. Of these, 13.3 per cent said they access it daily, while 36.4 per cent access it occasionally.
Meanwhile, 44.3 per cent of employers believe that allowing staff to access social media at work will help retain them. A third allow while 43.2 per cent allow limited access. But 23.7 per cent of employers ban social media at work.
Nick Deligiannis, managing director of Hays in Australia, urged employers to have clear policies in place, with more than half of the candidates saying they used company devices to access social media and a quarter saying they did not know how to represent their employer.
"It is important to have a social media policy covering how social media is used for work-related matters, the use of it for personal matters at work, and what employees can and cannot say about your organization," he said.
Fiona Inverarity, an employment partner at Truman Hoyle Lawyers, said employers should avoid banning social media at work "because as soon as you can catch someone using it, you are going to have to discipline them and also everyone is using their own technology", she said.
She urged employers to established social media policies that banned staff making derogatory remarks about fellow employees or the company. She also recommended companies establish whether they or their employee owned connections on an employee's Linked In profile and include this in the staff member's employment contract.
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