All the Better to Hear You With: Using Social Media for Employee Listening

C. S. Ju, E. A. Liguori, & N. M. Savage, Old Dominion University*

Understanding employee voice in organizations is essential, as issues employees face may not always formally reach an organization’s top decision makers. Employee voice refers to the informal and voluntary expression of ideas, suggestions, concerns, information on issues, or opinions regarding work-related matters by an employee to leaders or management who have the potential to enact relevant changes or improvements (Morrison, 2014). Acknowledging voices of employees can help leaders make changes that are important to the direction of the organization (Ashford et al., 2009). Research suggests that employee perceptions of voice are related to a myriad of important workplace outcomes, such as employee performance, justice perceptions, job attitudes, relational outcomes, and withdrawal behaviors (Bashur & Oc, 2015). Thus, ensuring that the voices of all employees are heard by management is important to consider for the health of the employees and the organization as a whole.

Social Media (SM)

With the majority of Americans using some form of social media, including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube (Pew Research Center, 2024), it is worthwhile to consider its use as a means of listening to employees. Holland et al. (2016) identified the influence of job satisfaction on employees’ inclination to use social media for voicing work-related concerns, but it is important to note that their study predates the widespread emergence of TikTok and Instagram Reels, which have changed the landscape of online expression. Holland et al. concluded that social media was not commonly utilized for the purpose of expressing work-related grievances at the time of their study; however, the subsequent rise of short-form content platforms may have shifted this behavior among contemporary employees.

Although some research has focused on social media as a means of recovery from work demands, the results are mixed. Cheng and Cho (2021) found that social media use could be an effective at-work recovery activity to improve relaxation and psychological detachment but found similar results for breaks that did not involve social media, suggesting that, overall, having a break from work is what is important. Alternatively, some research has found that using social media for connectivity and social support, rather than disengagement, can provide additional benefits to employees, unique from the support they may receive in person (Cole et al., 2017). Furthermore, many brands engage in social listening in which they use social media to listen to their consumers; so how, then, can organizations use social media as another “tool in their toolbelt” to better hear their employees’ appreciations and concerns?

One method could be to have an internal social media site to minimize concerns about susceptibility to online scams, sharing confidential information, or other legally questionable situations (SHRM, n.d.), in which employees can share information and make connections with one another (Mishra, 2023). For instance, internal social media sites can help break down hierarchical barriers, further promoting open dialogue within the organization (Mishra, 2023), which can then facilitate the generation of creative and innovative ideas (Keum & See, 2017). Furthermore, by having online groups and communities in which employees can participate, such as communities of practice or social groups based on a part of an employee’s identity, employees are more likely to be engaged (Mishra, 2023; SHRM, n.d.) and employers then have a central source of information from which to “hear” employees praises and concerns. This type of organizational infrastructure can also allow leadership to learn of concerns that particular groups of employees may be experiencing and to identify ways of mitigating potential issues.

Social Media: A Space for Commiseration

Social media is commonly used as a space for people to share humor, personal stories, and create their own communities. The internet phenomenon known as “story time,” which originated on the popular social media platform TikTok a few years ago, remains highly popular to this day. The story time trend involves individuals recounting their specific experiences, many of which have occurred in the workplace. The widespread accessibility and viewership on TikTok enable these stories to reach vast audiences, with many users personally relating to similar instances. The hashtag #storytime, as of March 2024, has over 21 million posts on TikTok, which demonstrates the continuing appeal and influence of this content within the platform’s community. The personal stories people share vary widely in topic, but many of these videos involve employees speaking about situations in their current or former employment, the hiring process, or other work-related experiences.

Although story times often adopt a serious tone, other social media trends on Tik Tok and Instagram frequently incorporate humor. It may be surprising how many of these amusing trends can be related to popular I-O topics. For example, in the following Instagram post, this user is making a quip about how many meetings employees have to attend each day (i.e., the “meeting before the meeting”; to watch, click here). Although comical, this employee may be experiencing role conflict as the “meeting before the meeting” is taking time away from other “in role” performance tasks. As we know, role conflict, a type of hindrance demand, is related to negative employee outcomes such as burnout (Schaufeli & Taris, 2014). From this video, a practitioner may glean that employee time is limited and some meeting topics could be handled in a less time-consuming manner (i.e., via email). Another popular corporate satire includes workplace jargon and the overall tone of meetings (to watch examples, click here and here). Although humorous, this may allude to a culture that promotes surface acting. Meta analysis has shown that emotional labor, which includes surface acting, is positively associated with outcomes such as burnout and negatively associated with job satisfaction (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). From this, a practitioner may surmise that leaders should promote authenticity in meetings and leave the corporate jargon behind.

Overall, these are just a few examples of videos and trends that social media users have made to commiserate about some of the bothersome parts of their workday. Sharing these experiences gives space for employees to voice their concerns without scrutiny from their company. We posit that this also provides an opportunity for practitioners to hear these trending workplace perspectives, which likely would not be shared with management.

Social Media Amplifying Voices of Minority Employees

As noted, voicing dissent toward a leader or policy within the workplace can be difficult for any employee, as voice behaviors have been negatively associated with important facets of career progression, such as promotions and salary increases (Seibert et al., 2001). Importantly, the difficulty of voicing dissent may be compounded when the conflict is voiced from an employee with a minority identity. The ability to vocalize dissent in the workplace stems from having positions of power and privilege; thus, the voices that become muted tend to be those with less powerful organizational positions (i.e., individuals with minority identities; Meares et al., 2004).  Furthermore, when employees in lower power positions speak out in their organization, they may not be able to counter the impact their identity may have on voice recognition from their boss, as research has found racial majority employees experience more voice recognition from their supervisors compared to employees with a racial minority identity (Howell et al., 2015). In some cases, if an employee with a marginalized identity does voice dissent, it can be criticized for how it is expressed. Erksine and Bilimoria (2019) note that when Afro-Diasporic women voice frustrations, they are often tone policed and encouraged to voice their opinions in a calmer way.  Building on this idea, Rabelo et al., (2021) reviewed tweets from women of color regarding their experiences with White display rules within the workplace and how those rules impose norms of Whiteness on Black women. Importantly, they note how some women experienced the angry Black women (ABW) stereotype reinforced in their workplace. For example, when they simply voiced dissent, or critical feedback, during a meeting it was seen as “overly opinionated.” All in all, these experiences of tone policing and enforcement of the AWB stereotype create environments that make voicing future concerns difficult for individuals with minority identities.

Since the silencing of these voices has been brought to attention, much of the extant allyship literature emphasizes the importance of amplifying the voices of individuals with marginalized identities (Akam et al., 2021; Kam et al., 2022; Przybylo & Fahs, 2021; Radke et al., 2020), as this gives space for those often silenced voices to be heard. We propose social media may serve as an avenue for employees to voice their broad workplace grievances without the risk of negatively impacting their career progression (Siebert et al., 2001), with the exception of disclosing private organizational information or breaking company policy. Furthermore, management has the opportunity to use social media as a tool to identify these important issues of which they may not be aware.

Cautions of Social Media for Workplace Decisions/Practitioner Use

We propose that social media can be a valuable resource for researchers to explore new research avenues and for practitioners to stay updated about current workplace issues and trends. Nonetheless, we caution the integration of social media into formal workplace decisions and, especially, the hiring process. Although social media has provided pathways for connecting job seekers and recruiters (e.g., LinkedIn), the use of social media in the selection and recruitment process raises concerns regarding fairness, privacy, and potential discrimination. If the applicant does not disclose their social media profiles and activity but the employer locates and browses the information anyway, it could arguably constitute an invasion of privacy. Further, job candidates are likely to share personal information online that is not relevant to their job application, such as sexual orientation and religious beliefs, both protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This information may then trigger a recruiter’s biases, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and can lead to discriminatory practices, as suggested by a hiring experiment conducted by Acquisti and Fong (2020). This study found that employers in Republican counties and states exhibited significant bias against a fictitious Muslim job candidate compared to a fictitious Christian candidate. Thus, the implicit biases formed through the use of social media in the hiring process can potentially lead to violations of antidiscrimination laws.

In addition to the legal and ethical concerns, the use of social media in the hiring process raises questions about the reliability and validity of the information gleaned from these platforms. Currently, there is no standardized and validated approach for evaluating job seekers’ online activity and presence (Landers & Schmidt, 2016; Roth et al., 2016). This lack of measurement and consistency can result in subjectivity that is influenced by biases or stereotypes rather than objective criteria related to job qualifications. Furthermore, job applicants may not always portray themselves accurately on social media outlets. As highlighted by Landers and Schmidt (2016), recruiters are realistically constrained in their ability to consider the contextual influences when making judgments about the job seeker’s personality, attitudes, and values through social media posts. For a more comprehensive exploration of the use of social media in the hiring process, we recommend consulting the book Social Media in Employee Selection and Recruitment: Theory, Practice, and Current Challenges, edited by Richard Landers and Gordon Schmidt.

Conclusion

The interplay of social media and various workplace dynamics and processes is nuanced. However, we propose that social media can be a valuable tool to understanding prevalent workplace issues more broadly. We suggest that social media may be especially useful for hearing the issues facing employees with minority identities, who are often silenced. Nevertheless, we caution practitioners’ use of social media to explicitly seek what their own employees are posting online or using social media as part of any formal selection process. We propose that practitioners should use social media to identify broad workplace trends existing within the workforce as a starting point. Subsequently, any trends that may seem salient can be further examined through anonymously surveying employees as a means to protect their privacy. Furthermore, given that current empirical work on voicing concerns through social media precedes the advent of TikTok and Instagram Reels (Holland et al., 2016), where most of the recent workplace issue videos trend, future research should re-examine social media’s role in voicing workplace concerns with the inclusion of those two social media sites.

Note

*indicates equal work and authors only sorted alphabetically

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