Is your organization in the social media world?
If your answer is “no” you’re wrong. Sorry, but it was a trick question. Whether your organization admits it or not, it is in the social media world. Clients, prospective clients, employees and even competitors are almost certainly engaging in conversations about your organization on Facebook and LinkedIn. The question is whether you’re a part (or even aware) of those conversations. The second question is what are you going to do to shape those conversations, to the extent that you can?
The reality is that Canadian employees, for example, are blogging, tweeting and accessing social networking websites with increasing frequency. And the result is increased legal risks for Canadian businesses. These risks include disgruntled employees intentionally revealing trade secrets, defaming supervisors, harassing co-workers, or posting negative information about their employers’ business. There are even additional threats resulting from loyal employees who inadvertently disclose information online that runs afoul of privacy and competition laws. These threats won’t go away if your company has its head in the sand regarding social media.
One important step to dealing with and leveraging social media is to implement a social media policy within your organization. Doing so won’t address every potential headache related to social media, but it will help to manage online discussions that are occurring during and after work hours by your own employees. And since some of the greatest risks I’ve mentioned above stem from your employees, my best advice is to implement a social media policy. Key components in a social media policy should include:
- defining the scope of prohibited activities;
- clarifying to whom the policy applies;
- addressing how infringing content should be removed from social media sites;
- spelling out who, when and how monitoring of social media sites occurs; and
- advising of penalties and enforcement of the policy.
[...] Social media: Is your organization’s head in the sand? [...]
[...] Social media: Is your organization’s head in the sand? [...]
[...] Other related blog posts include Employee monitoring in today’s workplace and Social media: Is your organization’s head in the sand? [...]