01.13.10
Business policy for Facebook, Twitter and Blogging?
Most, if not all, organisations have in some form an “Internet Policy” which would typically describe what is acceptable to do with your browser during office hours. I’ve seen these range from ‘anything as long as it’s legal and you don’t waste time’ to ‘these 3 sites for these 5 people ONLY’.
And this is fine if you expect people to leave their brains at the door on the way out of the building and their mobile devices at the door on their way in. The problem is that neither of these are practical in the world today (OK certain security-sensitive organisations do actually require that you NOT bring mobile devices into the building but they kind of fall outside of my scope of general business here). So even if the strict policies of the organisation are enforced at the desktop, folks are still able to access Facebook, twitter, blog-spaces and the like from their “mobile phones”. I’m quoting here because as time passes these devices have become so much more than phones and the name increasing doesn’t fit. These are the the small screens which make up the screen triumvirate of most of our lives; small screens = mobile devices, mid-screens = desktop systems (PCs, Macs etc) and large screens being our TVs which are also becoming a source of rich media and not just TV broadcast.
But I digress, the point here is that very few organisations have put in place policies and guidelines to help the individual employees understand what they should and should not share outside of the company, how they communicate what they are doing and who that communication is available too. An example of this would be the Facebook invitation to ‘Friends’ to attend a party. The intent was honest but the method and audience hadn’t been properly considered, the result was several hundred people turning up and a seriously wrecked house. Translate that into Business terms and you get my point.
I’m not any sort of advocate of nannying at all, and I believe that in the majority of cases common sense prevails and individuals are reasonable sensible. HOWEVER, we live in a statistical universe and given enough people, someone will do something stupid and potentially damaging unless strongly advised otherwise, simply out of ignorance or lack of thought.
So policies ARE necessary to help to mitigate these statistical certainties and to enable businesses to protect themselves. As an employer, ask yourself these simple questions:
- If someone blogged about their working day, could they unintentionally reveal sensitive information?
- Could someone updating their Facebook status as “This place sucks, no-one EVER listens!” reflect poorly on you as an employer?
- Could a Twitter update of “Another meeting, I wonder what bad news is coming now?!” impact your business confidence?
While it’s true that the comments of one person may not even register, it’s also true that it only takes one person to start a rumor.
Being able to identify and address ANY sort of communications channel and how it could be used or mis-used is vital. Those forward thinking businesses have adopted social media as a marketing medium and done so with great success, so it MUST hold true that bad news has the same, if not greater, impact.
