Member Article

Social media in the modern workplace

I would like to share some information that I gained from a workshop I attended this week, regarding managing social media in the modern workplace. I am no means an expert on the topic, but would like to share some of the information I learnt, which - given the popularity of social media today - is a subject which is becoming increasingly important to both employers and employees.

As the number of users on social media sites continue to increase (twitter has now reached the heights of over 1 billion users!), it is now a factor which employers definitely have to consider. A comment made on a social media site can reach a worldwide audience within seconds - scary I know!

Don’t get me wrong, it is a very powerful tool and a very useful one for businesses. However, there are negative developments arising from irresponsible use of social media. If the wrong comment is “tweeted” it can have dramatic consequences. Therefore, the advice is that “social media needs to be managed”; new guidelines, policies and cross-references to existing policies are recommended.

Managing social media can include writing a social media policy; this then needs to be shared with all of the workforce. Employers need to ensure that staff understand it and the consequences of not abiding by these rules. Even if you only have one employee, it is important that you make them aware of what is acceptable behaviour. This includes using social media outside of working hours: there have been a number of high profile cases of employees “sharing” information regarding work which has led to their dismissal.

You may want to decide from the outset how strict you will be with your social media policies, and make them realistic. Make them too severe and it can be difficult to control and can be seen as intrusive. However, too lenient and the policy can be seen as meaningless.

A factor for employers to consider is who owns the password for social media accounts; it is important to include in the policy that the password is owned by the company, not the user. Then no unfortunate “tweets” will be shared if the employee leaves the company, as was the case for HMV!

Other factors that should be considered when writing social media policies is harassment and discriminatory material written on social media sites. Something posted on social media, especially Facebook, has the potential to be a continuing act of discrimination or harassment.

These are just a few issues to think about: social media really is changing the way we live our lives both at home and at work.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Andrea Mason .