Developing a Social Media Policy

With the vastly changing media landscape, particularly online, it’s becoming increasingly important to utilize available online mediums to inform, educate and cultivate online audiences to build and strengthen relationships.

With the growth of social media, employers must determine how they will allow their employees to use social media in the workplace. Blocking the use of these sites is no longer beneficial as this can result in decreased networking, lack of customer communication and missed sales leads.

And, if you don’t think your employees are using social media sites at work, think again. Even if they are not utilizing social media sites on office computers, employees are using their smart phones. In fact, research firm TNS Digital Life found that, on average, users spend 3.1 hours a week on social networking through mobile devices, compared to 2.2 hours on e-mail.

Before an employee posts something confidential or private, create a social media policy, or guidelines for communicating online, to help protect your employees, clients and brand.

WORKFORCE CENTRAL FLORIDA (WCF) recommends the following solutions to developing a social media policy:

Evaluate your company culture. What is your company culture? Is it progressive, conservative or somewhere in between? Design your policy to complement your environment. This will help employees to easily adapt to the policy.   For example, in a more progressive company, management may feel comfortable encouraging all employees to have a Twitter account to tweet about the brand regularly. Other companies may prefer to leave the organization’s messaging to the communications department and allow staff to use social media for connecting only.

Look at what other companies have done in the past. Any Google search for social media policies will reveal many tips and examples. Analyze how other companies have addressed confidentiality, openness, etc. Some excellent examples include:

• IBM
• Intel
• The Coca-Cola Company

Design guidelines to represent your organization in a positive manner. Focus on what your employees can do, not what they can’t. Emphasize the proper use of social media in the workplace, encourage openness and trust your employees to communicate and develop relationships in a positive way. Topics to consider include:

• The rules for social media use in the workplace. May employees use social media for personal and professional networking in the workplace? Or, will you allow social media use just for company outreach and networking? May staff members talk about your brand?
• Employees are representing the organization online. Remind staff members that they are always representing the organization, even in personal accounts and that online content can live online forever, even when deleted.  
• Staff members are personally responsible for the content they publish online. This includes wikis, blogs, message boards or any user-generated media, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Respect confidential information. Provide clear guidelines as to what is proper to share about your organization and what is not.
• Follow laws such as copyright and plagiarism. Encourage employees to cite sources for quotes, photos and videos.
• Be respectful. Ask employees to refrain from heated debates, offensive comments and personal, political or religious comments or beliefs.
• Encourage honesty and authenticity. Employees must identify themselves as employees when commenting about the organization on any sites. 
• All company policies apply to the use of social media. This includes ethics, conflicts of interest, electronic communications, harassment, etc. 
• Disciplinary actions if social media policy is not followed. What are the repercussions from not following the policy.

Include other departments and employees. If you have a legal and/or communications department, ask for their input. Also, consider asking for employee feedback. Getting them involved early will help them adopt to the policy.

Train your employees. Include your social media policy in orientations and make it part of professional development opportunities.