Ethical Issues in Gen Y Employees: A Social Media Perspective

Introduction

Social media applications such as blogs, social networking, and video sharing have soared in popularity and are now present in almost every workplace

By providing a highly interactive communication platform, blogs, forums and websites such as Twitter®, Facebook® and Digg® and many more have created a fundamental shift in the way businesses relate to their audiences.

social media has inspired both excitement and intimidation in marketers as businesses try to embrace this influential tool despite various threats that they come across.

Literature Survey

With the entry of Generation Y to the working world, the workforce for the first time contains four generations:-

- Traditionalists (also called Veterans, Silent, or Greatest

generation; 75 million born before 1945; 10% of the workforce)

- Baby Boomers (80 million born 1945-1964, 45% of the workforce)

- Generation X (46 million born 1965-1980, 30% of the workforce),

- Generation Y (also called Echo Boomers, Millennial, Internet

generation, or Nexters;76 million born after 1980; 15% of the

workforce)

(Paul, 2004; Francis-Smith, 2004; Johns, 2003; Martin and Tulgan, 2004; Raines, 2002)

Nearly 60% of HR professionals in large companies report conflict between younger and older workers (Work Ethic Primary Conflict, 2004)

Though it is the most affluent generation (Allen, 2004), some 16% of Gen Y grew up or is growing up in poverty (Raines, 2002).

Gen Y is inclined to be positive, polite, curious, energetic, and respectful of its parents and grandparents (Francis-Smith, 2004).

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff argued social media has empowered individuals and has forced the idea of "news media" to morph whether or not the industry has desired this change("Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" ).

Objectives

To study the importance of social media in today's business.

To study the ethical issues faced due to social media by Gen Y employees in the business.

To highlight the importance of implementation of Social media policy in order to overcome the ethical issues.

Social