Social media: How to get your governance and guidelines right
Posted by Neil Davey in Social CRM on Mon, 26/09/2011 - 01:10
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Comprehensive advice on designing and implementing a social media policy, including a best practice toolkit for your firm.
Social media has become part of the daily routine for hundreds of millions of people around the world. And at a time when business technology is becoming increasingly consumerised, the prevalence and pervasiveness of social media means companies off all sizes and sectors are having to look at how they can capitalise on it.
Gartner is just one research group that has issued papers on the business value of social media, describing how the technology provides “tempting opportunities” for companies to more effectively interact with employees, customers and partners.
As such, the use of social networking within businesses has soared, with employees using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing, recruitment and other processes. Research from business consulting and audit firm Protiviti found that more than half (51%) of workers surveyed now claim to engage with a social networking site whilst at work.
But accompanying the potential benefits of social media are the dangers. Key risks highlighted by survey of over 1,000 adults conducted by market researcher ICM include potential leakage of sensitive information, unintentional upload of Trojans or viruses to employees’ computers, increased targeting of individuals who are associated with the company for social engineering attacks and individuals falling prey to fraudulent scams.
Furthermore, on websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, manageable incidents can turn into major crises if not responded to in a timely and appropriate manner, and mishandled social media situations, often widely reported in the traditional media, demonstrate the potential risk to corporate reputations.
Greater guidance
Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell is one of many that has called for greater guidance for the employee. Social media, she says, “disrupts the long-standing rules of business in many ways,” and as a result “those who participate in social media need guidance from their employer about the rules, responsibilities, ‘norms’ and behaviours expected of them, and these topics are commonly covered in the social media policy.”
However, at present, there are few organisations that are rolling out such policies. Debra Logan, VP and distinguished analyst at Gartner, explains: “Companies have one of two approaches at present. They either try to ban it because they are concerned that staff will waste their time on social media (but if people want to waste their time, they’ll do it without social media!); or they just ignore it instead of providing guidance.”
She adds: “Companies that do have policies are the ones that absolutely have to have them – financial services and law firms tend to have pretty firm policies on these things. But most everybody else is just shooting in the dark. And if an employee makes a mistake, they don’t have a leg to stand on because without a policy they don’t have anything to back them up as a company to say ‘you were wrong, you shouldn’t have done that and we can discipline you’.”
Policy guidelines
Clearly this approach is unsustainable. Gartner suggests that the pervasiveness of social media is such that it forecasts its use will surpass email as the primary form of communication for business users, and as such companies of all sizes must consider guidelines and policies relating to the use of social media. The question is, where do they start?
With no clear guidance from courts or regulators expected in the near future, Logan says that the human resources and legal departments need to take the lead. “HR tends to be part of legal but the actual legal and compliance people need to be involved because no-one is scare of HR really, while people do take what lawyers say seriously. So the actual legal officer needs to be involved in the policy. It needs to have that stamp of authority from high up. And then you can be reasonably sure that you’re safe because they will look at it from a risk perspective.”
Gartner calls for social policy designers to then ask seven critical questions:
- What is the organisation’s social media strategy actually is?
- Who should write and revise the supporting policy and who will be responsible and accountable for it?
- How will the policy be vetted?
- What training scheme for employees will be required?
- Who will enforce the policy and how?
- How can managers best help employees work out the best approach to take when engaging with social media tools?
- Have social media initiatives met their objectives, and how can efforts be made more effective?
In terms of the contents of the programme, unsurprisingly staff training on what is acceptable during our outside of working hours is vital. “Under UK employment law, employers can take disciplinary action against employees who post defamatory comments online that bring their company into disrepute,” wrote Bradley Anstis, VP of technical strategy at M86 Security on MyCustomer.com sister-site, HRzone earlier this year. “A growing trend is the practice of ensuring that employees have different profiles to use for the business versus social use, a practice such as this should be defined,” he adds.
Anstis suggests the following elements companies should feature in a social media policy:
- Expand your company's existing acceptable use policies governing email and web communications
- State what can be posted during business hours and outside of business hours (if indeed there is any difference). Where there is no differentiation, clearly state this in the policy
- Let staff know that messages posted to social media sites will be monitored. This is vital
- Review all privacy settings on social media sites that contain your corporate profile. Educate staff about privacy settings too. Opting for minimal settings can expose your network to malware directed at popular social media sites
- Specify what is acceptable and what is inappropriate to post to social media sites
This last point is of course absolutely critical if organisations want to protect themselves from any reputational damage generated through social media. Preema Patel of Bevans Solicitors therefore recommends that organisations put particular focus on two areas: fair dismissal and suitable policies.
“All employees have the right to be dismissed in a fair manner and the onus is on the employer to prove that the reason for their dismissal is fair,” explains Patel. “As such, employers need to be careful in ensuring that the procedures that they use during the dismissal process are fair.”
It must be established that:
- At the time of dismissal, the employer believed that the employee was guilty of misconduct
- At the time of dismissal, the employer had reasonable grounds for believing that the employee was guilty of that misconduct
- At the time that the employer formed their belief on those grounds, it had carried out as much investigation into the issue as was reasonable in the circumstances
- It is in this context that the importance of having a robust social media policy that can be incorporated into workers’ employment contracts becomes clear.
When drafting a social media policy, Patel says it is important to understand your employers’ objectives. “In most cases, these aims will be to protect the reputation of the company, ensure that confidential information is not disclosed to the general public and/or that social media tools are not used for improper purposes such as bullying or harassment,” Patel says, adding that establishing and outlining the types of conduct prohibited by the company as a further point to consider.
Meanwhile, the Social Media Business Council has pulled together a best practices toolkit to provide organisations with a framework to build their own internal guidelines. The checklist includes guidance on social media policies such as:
- Disclosure of identity
- Personal/unofficial blogging and outreach
- Blogger relations
- Compensation and incentives
- Agency and contractor disclosure
The increasing proliferation of social media in everybody’s personal and professional lives means, Patel says, that it is “ever more important for employers to establish rules and policies.”
“Having a policy that makes it clear what each individual employees’ responsibility is when representing the company in social media,” agrees Logan. “A simple policy is the first thing. And it needs to be enforced. HR and legal need to endorse it and enforce it and educate people about it. That is the main thing.”
Anstis concludes: “Social media can make your staff more productive, speeding their decisions by providing them with instant information and feedback from customers and prospects. A combination of education, technology and enforcement will enable employees to keep communication channels open and maintain productivity.”
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Social crm need guidelines
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Social network has become part of our professional life, but I agree that using crm need guidelines, and a precise strategy that must be followed in order not to lose control of the process, (wasting their time!!) drawing instead a ‘potential benefit’. In order to do this it’s essential to involve and drive the employes first and the customers consequently in the crm strategy. Only respecting the social crm business rules companies will achieve their goals.
Francesca Bardino crowdengineering.com