If you have glanced at the newspapers recently you will have no doubt become aware of the story of the HR Executive sacked by his employers, BG Group, for using his LinkedIn profile incorrectly.

Firstly, let’s clear up a few points.  He wasn’t sacked from his position, he left due to collapse of working relations with his superiors that stemmed from his “inappropriate” use of LinkedIn.  This has come to light as he has brought a case of constructive dismissal.

I am not going to attempt to explain the nuances of employment law as quite frankly I wouldn’t know where to start! What I will do is explain how BG Group is shooting themselves in the foot, as they are missing the point and more importantly the value of LinkedIn and social media as a whole.

In one of my earlier posts for Discuss HR I explained how I have managed to harness social media to be a hugely effective part of my business.  The key to this is simply to engage with your audience.  There will be no interest in your brand, be it personal or employer, if all you do is sell.  People use social media to learn and engage – after all there is a reason it is called SOCIAL media!

Looking at this case in more detail, John Flexman was Head of Graduate Recruitment at BG Group.  His inappropriate use of LinkedIn was as follows:

• He had listed “career opportunities” as an option in his “contact John for” section of his profile – this was seen as a conflict of interest.
• He had listed information about how he has reduced staff attrition – which was viewed as disclosing confidential information.  BG Group requires only dates and job titles are provided in LinkedIn profiles.

There are so many glaring errors in this approach!  The first point to focus on is that John Flexman is a recruitment professional.  It is his remit to attract talented graduates and the use of LinkedIn is essential to any resourcing strategy.  Current figures list LinkedIn membership at close to 140 million and it is recognised that 14 million are students or recent graduates, hence why it is essential to have a presence within the platform.

Secondly, no doubt a large number of you will have career opportunities listed within your profile despite the fact you are not looking for a new role.  In fact many of you will be completely unaware of this being listed!  The vagaries of the LinkedIn settings process makes it extremely easy for this to be overlooked.  More importantly though, is that nowhere does it state “career opportunities” is solely related to looking for new employment.  I am presuming BG Group view the option of “Job Inquiries” as the only option Mr Flexman should have listed.  But if you were a fresh faced graduate, it would not be beyond the realms of reality to consider that job inquiries mean the person is only interested about jobs and not people!  Surely as a recruitment professional he should have “career opportunities” listed as something of interest?

BG Group’s concern was that he was actively touting himself on LinkedIn as looking for work.  As someone who uses the medium for headhunting on a very regular basis, that option makes no difference.  I can still contact anyone about a prospective role regardless of whether that is listed.  Therefore, having this removed as part of a social media policy is not only draconian it is also rather pointless!

Finally, and for me this is the key point, the fact BG Group require only job titles and dates to be listed in profiles, this will be doing real damage to their employer brand. 

Imagine the scenario: you see a role advertised with a company that you wish to apply for.  As you are a clued-up job seeker you want to research them and see if you have any form of referral to utilise, so you get onto LinkedIn. When you do find a company employee you find no information about the business, so you move on to another one and another.  There is no information listed at all about these peoples’ remits or the business as a whole.  It would be very easy to be left rather deflated about this as you could jump to the conclusion that either the company administer an extremely strict information policy, or that the business as a whole is somewhat behind the pace of time.  Either way they are certainly not engaging with you and it doesn’t fill you with confidence in the role or business. 

If a business loses just one talented person due to this then they are damaging their brand.  Rather fear social media, they should embrace it.  If you look at employees from the likes of ITV or CH2M Hill you will find detailed profiles and clear links to their respective job pages or website.  In these instances they are engaging with any prospective reader and job seeker.

One element John Flexman was criticised for was including detailed information about how he reduced staff attrition.  BG Group claim this was confidential whereas Mr Flexman maintains it was public knowledge; either way let me put this question to you, if you were a graduate looking for your first job would you be attracted to a business that publically states its employees stay with the business?  At that stage of your career you want to learn and be nurtured and surely this would inspire you with confidence to see such promising and open information?

The world is changing at a rate of knots but companies should not be risk averse and fear change, they need to embrace it if they want to be the employer of choice.  Social media, whether it be LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or any of the other thousand platforms, is there to build relationships with customers, clients, employees and prospective employees.  The only way this can successfully be achieved is for companies to engage with their audience.