BUSINESS
Social Networks as Innovation
in HR Marketing?
The theme for the current issue is innovation and the topic of this interview is innovation in HR
Marketing. We discussed this with Jiří Kratochvíl from the Ostrava-based communication agency
DIGITaal, which deals with HR marketing issues daily. How can social networks help you with
recruitment? What sort of stance should we adopt towards social networks and are local companies
well versed in using them? These questions and others will be answered in this interview.
It is said that employees lose up to 500
hours a year due to an inability to use
new technologies. How do you quickly
and efficiently support the digitization
of companies?
This may simply be my subjective opinion,
however, I believe that it is important to
identify routine activities and automate
them. At DIGITAAL, we turn these routine
activities into processes that are easily
duplicated within our project software.
These can include recurring tasks that
have to be done for clients in essentially
the same manner each week. For example,
recording new employees, ones that
have left or those that are onboarding.
We automate reports for clients, which
previously took up around ten hours
a month and, thanks to this, saved those
ten hours. The list goes on. Recently, we
underwent a DigiAudit conducted by the
Moravian Silesian Center for Innovation,
measuring the level of digitization in
companies, and DIGITAAL passed with
flying colors. The expert found that our
levels of digitization in data transfer, task
transfer, etc. were well above standard,
and our processes well optimized. In
my opinion, the first key step towards
implementing technologies should be the
usage of a system for directing projects
and the identification of processes that
can be easily duplicated. This allows
you to quickly gain an overview of your
projects and easily start up new ones.
Thanks to cloud systems, it is also then
no problem to work from wherever,
whenever while maintaining contact with
your team.
How are social networks being
developed now? Is there perhaps
a network that could help with, for
example, employee recruitment?
The world of social media is being
developed every day. We operate in a very
dynamic field, which sometimes makes it
hard to keep up with all the innovation.
With the increase in companies’ success
and decrease in unemployment comes
a growing pressure towards employee
recruitment. What we know to be typical
employment platforms are often not
enough anymore and so social media
serve as a great addition to traditional
recruitment channels. We at DIGITAAL
devote a lot of time to social media and
therefore are able to deliver our customers
something that is much more than simply
a link to a career listing; we offer them
direct contact information of specific
candidates that want their information
displayed. In conjunction with our precise
targeting and great creativity, this allows
our method, which we call HR mining, to
work as a powerful competitive tool for
our clients. A great advantage of hiring
through social networks is that it gives
the company access to people that are
not actively looking for employment, but
will make use of an opportunity when it is
presented to them. These types of people
often do not browse job portals, however,
they can still be reached—through their
mobile phones, that is.
What is the method behind finding
good employees through social media?
There are multiple ways to go about
it, however, having a well-outlined HR
communication strategy lies at the core
of all of them. That means developing
the company’s brand as a good employer
through not only communication, but
also employees, brand ambassadors or
even advertisement campaigns.
Are companies becoming more brave
when it comes to investment towards
innovation, advertisement campaigns,
and social media campaigns than they
were before the crisis?
We are definitely seeing an increased
interest in this area. The current global
situation
significantly
heightened
a company’s need to be seen on social
media, and that is very closely linked with
the field of HR. Companies need to hire,
old methods are no longer sufficient,
and so they resort to approaches such
as communication through LinkedIn
and advertisement campaigns on social
media that boost the company’s image as
a good employer.
Mr Kratochvíl,
thank you for the interview.
Text a foto:
Jiří Kratochvíl
www.digitaal.cz
POSITIV 4/2021 ǀ 23