What are your biggest concerns about how your employees use social media?
Do you worry about what they will say about their work? Their colleagues? That they will spend too much time on social media sites during work? Or do you worry about something completely different?
Good Answers (8)
Bob M
Owner, R. W. Miller Jr. & Associates, Human Resource Consulting
Best Answers in: Personnel Policies (1), Labor Relations (1)
I think there are several issues associated with the use of social media that employers need to consider - how they handle each issue will depend a lot on their culture:
1) how can they use it to market and establish their brand
2) how can they use it to recruit candidates
3) how do they define its use for employees and monitor productivity or loss of productivity based on its use.
4) how will they monitor it for employees that are saying negative things about the employer or management.
5) how do they control time (especially away from work) that employees spend on work related social media for pay, overtime, and benefit purposes.
Tom F
Editorial Director at BankInfoSecurity.com
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My biggest concerns: 1) What they say or do as a representative of my company; 2) Whether they expose critical information that should be protected.
best,
Tom
DAVE M
Wire name favors created at parties ★ Traffic builder and lead generator for your trade show booth ★ WireNames.com
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No worries... Social media is just another way of communicating with one another...
Cathy I
Virtual CFO, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and Consultant
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Liza, I see you are a lawyer. I take it you see the risks that employers make when allowing their employees to use social media. On the other hand, I worry that companies aren't trusting their employees and are trying to censor them. I say let them use social media, but still protect yourself as a company. Do Google searches to make sure people aren't saying anything bad about the company. This includes employees and customers.
Someone posted a sample social networking policy for employers the other day. This might be beneficial for companies to use.
Links:
Elaborating on Dave's reply - Social Media is (mostly) "just another way to communicate". In the sense that social media sites present yet another way for employees to forward information beyond its appropriate bounds, and yet another arena in which to reflect poorly on their employer or to simply get stupid, there's no real difference.
The one material difference between social media sites and the older methods for screwing up (email, blogs, newsgroups, comments on newspaper story web pages, etc) is the substantially increased complexity of the possible relationships among users of a social media site, and the lack of adequate understanding by the majority of social media users regarding how much sharing actually happens when a piece of information is put in one or another spot in a social media forum.
To that end, the one policy enhancement I 'worry about' regarding social media sites is the enhanced need to educate employees about these misunderstood complexities and the often wide-than-intended sharing that social media site use produces.
David G
Experienced executive-level management, Entrepreneur, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, "The Guy to Go To For Solutions"
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Biggest concerns: Revealing trade secrets or potential business plans - either by accident or on purpose.
Saying or doing something stupid that turns into an HR issue.
Talking about internal policies that cast the company in a bad light w/o all the backup information to go along with it.
Doing something stupid at an event (company sponsored or not), taking pictures, and posting them. Then crafting text to go along with the pictures that makes it look like the company condones that kind of stuff, or which could open up the company to liability during a lawsuit (e.g. "Well, here's a picture of a bunch of employees passed out on the floor at a Company Party. Is the normal culture of Company XYZ one that promoted or required excessive alcohol consumption in order to get promoted to the next higher position?"
The amount of bandwidth that it uses - what else do I need that bandwidth for? Do I need to purchase MORE bandwidth because people are spending too much time on this unproductive junk?
The amount of time it takes? Just like shopping online during the day. How much is too much? I'd say if your job doesn't involve social media postings (approved and vetted by legal and marketing), then any amount is too much. If it's personal, do it at home on your own time and your own equipment. Leave the company out of it.
People who start a gossip network about Joe Bob and Jane Doe in the Art Department... Then JB and JD go on and on about Mr. X and Mr. Z in the PR department, etc... That kind of crap gets out of control quickly and devolves into problems.
Yes, you can have Policies in place, but someone's got to monitor and enforce and deal with issues that come up. If you restrict the use of these sites to approved personnel who post approved information, then you don't have those issues to deal with (well, hopefully not).
Hi Liza, after setting the ground rules about privacy, code and ethics, etc; I would mostly worry if my employees didn't use social media. Here is why: People communicate - period. Social media is just a new form and I don't want people that can't or don't want to communicate. Secondly, generally speaking your people are the best advocates for your cause, company or business - unless you hired the wrong people.
Hi Liza,
well I would agree with Tim, because I believe everyone in the Organization should know the importance of the Social Media as it's an advocaton to the business not only that but also to give a good impression on your business, now I will add one thing is that some employees would use it badly and that comes back to how your staff are satisfied with their employer, how much they can give a good interpretention and thats what I think you have to worry about in the end.
More Answers (1)
The challenge of social media is that yes, it is a new form of communication-- but if someone is already a poor communicator, that translates to a very public forum.
