Organisations need urgently to get a handle on social media as a way to maintain a dialogue with consumers. But it’s also an increasingly important channel for talking to staff members and recruiting new ones.

Unfortunately the role of social media in employer-staff relations has been pretty negative so far – responsible more for firing than hiring. There have been several stories of people being handed their P45s after telling the world through Facebook and MySpace how bored they were at work, or what idiots their bosses were. You can’t blame companies for reacting this way, but it makes them look petty. For their part, users of networking sites are having to realise that what they publish online can expose them to difficulty at work, if they are not careful.

My guess is these sorts of incidents are inevitable in the birth of a new medium, and will become less common as both sides start to understand how far they can go without getting into trouble. We’ll also start to see companies using social media in an innovative way for internal communications.

The question is, how. Personnel Today reports that a two-hour training workshop is being launched this week to help HR professionals get the benefits.  It’s being run by Phil Woodford, a former creative director at recruitment advertising agency Stafford Long, who now works as a freelance trainer and lectures in marketing and advertising at Birkbeck College.

Woodford wants to demystify the terminology surrounding the new media and explain how it can help with the recruitment, management and development of people. He says, “The important thing is to harness [social media] to your advantage when recruiting staff, communicating with existing employees or delivering greater efficiency in working practices.”