SubscribeIs this a good corporate social media policy?
Beth Dunn writes about the growing number of companies that are developing policies to guide employee blogging, and cites Beth Kanter’s recent call for policy examples, like those from IBM, Sun, and Opera. She aptly points out the three concerns executives have about employee social media:
It seems like executives (and nonprofit boards) are primarily concerned about three things:
1. Employees will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, vendors, customers, etc.);
2. Customers/constituents will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, staff, vendors, etc.);
3. Employees will tell secrets.
All three have one thing in common. The shared root of the concerns is control: controlling the outbound message, and controlling the availability of venues for customers to say bad things about the company.
Beth goes on to say:
It’s been said that companies would do well to remember that they have to trust their employees on these issues every day already — every time they talk to a customer, deal with a member, gab with a vendor, or work with a sponsor, you are trusting them to represent you and your brand responsibly, with discretion and integrity.
Companies need to realize that they can’t control what people say about them. If a product sucks, customers already tell each other – if not in public then in private. If the work environment sucks, employees will talk about it with each other, and with family and friends.
What companies can control is the quality of their products, services, work environments, and cultures. And if those are all good, they’ll have nothing to worry about when it comes to social media.
my 2 euro cents,
-Stefan"
Stephen Collins says:
Apr 17th, 2008
I think you and Beth are right. Non-adoption and wariness of social media is largely about preparedness to lose control of the message. It doesn’t matter whether that message is your customers talking about you, your people talking about the business inside the wall, or customers and employees talking across boundaries.
But it’s no different than earlier adoption issues – phones on employee desks, email, faxes, whatever. The unfamiliarity is what’s driving the resistance, not the adoption of social media itself. When the familarity hurdle is surmounted, things become easier.
A common language for us early adopters to speak to business in is critical. I spoke about this issue at BarCamp Sydney a couple of weeks ago – http://www.acidlabs.org/2008/04/11/all-you-do-is-talk-talk/
Beth Kanter says:
Apr 18th, 2008
In addition to Beth Dunn’s post, another interesting point emerged from nonprofit community as a result of my original post was about policy as content or policy as discussion.
A large nonprofit (that shall remain anonymous) share their process for getting input AND educating employees about the change – and that the process of discussion around the policy helped prepare the organization in making this change.
You can read the story – plus some other thoughtful posts from nonprofit practitioners on social media policy.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/the-urge-to-edi.html
Julie says:
May 29th, 2009
Our key issue is not one of control. Rather we are governed by fairly stringent privacy regulations that place the onus legally on the corporation. If an employee breaches a privacy issue around a client, the corporation is liable. Control is the “big brother” concept that I seen thrown about constantly, but for a corporation the issue is larger and requires more extensive protection that just going with “no problem, don’t say anything bad”.