Link to be embedded:
http://www.socialmeteor.com/2009/10/21/common-sense-rules-employees-and-social-media/
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Employees & Social Media: Productivity, Security & Marketing on Company Time
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Much has been written about employer responsibility when it comes to employees’ surfing and social media habits while on the company’s computers, network and Internet connection.
There are issues of lost productivity, exposing the network to security threats, and the loss of company bandwidth as employees watch videos, download personal files or photos, and otherwise spend time on un-sanctioned Internet exploits.
The short question is: Should a company prohibit or actively block employee access to general (or specific) websites while on company technology? And if it prohibits such freedoms, could a company lose its marketing edge?
In the Age of Social Media, the questions grow even more pressing – and the answers are less clear.
Social Meteor recently commented on the “Two guiding principles” that can govern employee use of Social Media at work: business use and common sense. Used wisely, they can set the framework for acceptable use in any office.
Business use, they wrote, “means that an employee should use social media, such as Facebook, with ‘their company hat on.’ They’re helping customers. They’re applying social media in the context of their job. They’re posting comments and content for the company’s benefit. In these instances, employees should always be authentic. They should include their name and, when appropriate, the company name and their job title.”
Common sense, on the other hand, means surfing or updating one’s status when something more urgent isn’t clamoring for attention.
It’s the marketing question that is less easily defined. A status update on Facebook or a new tweet on Twitter can be as powerful a marketing message as a pay-per-click campaign the company’s marketing department underwrites. In fact, the one-to-one outreach of an individual’s social media efforts can build brand awareness, drive traffic to the company site, and establish better credibility for the company than almost any paid campaign. Face-to-face or “word of mouth” marketing are powerful forces today. Social media is just one extension.
This is especially pertinent in the professional services field – like attorneys, accountants or real estate agents. These professionals are brands. Their words and voice are what their clients and prospects have come to know or appreciate. This can be the case in social media, or with blogs. If a company prohibits its employees from blogging about life or work, is it also curtailing marketing opportunities spawned from employees talking up their skills, experiences, successes and the like?
In short, clamp down on social media, and you could cut off web-borne referrals or brand building.
A few suggested rules:
Establish guidelines. Email and IM are allowable for many employees in many organizations. Is it time to loosen the social media reigns? For those employees who have a bona fide reason to be on social media during the day (like attorneys, consultants or other service professionals), give them the green light – with caution. If necessary, put such governance in writing in the corporate / HR handbook.
Ban the obvious. Obviously, no porn. No downloads of images or videos or non-work files (viewing might be permissible, but downloads raise the threat level).
Be reasonable – and realistic. Don’t make your people lurk on the PC. During March Madness, for example, round-ball fans will check their pools or standings. Request a limit (15 minutes a day to check standings?).
Trust your people. If you hired based on character and trust, then let them surf under the same pretense. If they blow it, become addicted to bracket-watching come March, then it may be time to call them on it – or call in IT to install software to curtail or eliminate their freedoms.
“Effectively, we were answering the same question in the early ‘90 about allowing employees to have internet access on their computers, ” David Barrett, the public relations director for Creative Industry, told Social Meteor. “If Twitter and Facebook help get the job done (or provide off but creative task doodling time) all well and good, as long as there is a well understood and enforceable responsible use policy in place to protect people and companies from themselves.”
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Much has been written about employer responsibility when it comes to employees’ surfing and social media habits while on the company’s computers, network and Internet connection.
There are issues of lost productivity, exposing the network to security threats, and the loss of company bandwidth as employees watch videos, download personal files or photos, and otherwise spend time on un-sanctioned Internet exploits.
The short question is: Should a company prohibit or actively block employee access to general (or specific) websites while on company technology? And if it prohibits such freedoms, could a company lose its marketing edge?
In the Age of Social Media, the questions grow even more pressing – and the answers are less clear. (more…)
By Catherine J. MacIvor, Esq.
