The following is an article I wrote recently for our corporate publication, Ampersand. And yes, before you ask, we are already in the process of taking our own advice to produce our own social media policy for employees.
With the increased scrutiny companies find themselves under since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the last thing most employers want is yet another policy for staff. Maybe this is why so many have still to wake up to the impact that blogging employees can have on their reputations. There have already been a number of high profile cases that highlight the need for companies to guide their de facto online spokespeople.
When Hill & Knowlton
published their employee blogging policy in May 2005, we did so with the aim of helping those companies trying to tread the fine line between protecting freedom of speech for staff and meeting legal and corporate governance obligations.
We maintain that, with the boundaries between our personal and professional lives getting fuzzier by the day, there is no harm in formulating guidance on something that someone, somewhere in every company is doing. At the very least it’s a way to engage employees in an internal conversation, on a topic they probably know more about than any lawyer, human resource manager or corporate communications director.
One effect of proactively communicating such a policy is that employees now realise they have obligations – moral and ethical, even legal – that influence what they can and can’t say on both personal and professional blogs.
However, blogs aren’t the only way to hold an online dialogue – there are many other social media channels where conversations about your company are being held.
This explosion of consumer-generated media means that your company, brand, products or people are now being openly discussed in public by people with differing knowledge levels, access to information, motivations, self-regulation frameworks and relationships with you. To an extent, they can say what they want, when they want and how they want. Even without formal monitoring, these conversations will be noticed by your employees – so what guidance are you providing them on how and when to engage in online discussions about your organisation?
Our guess is none, and you will not be alone. The majority of companies are unaware of what their employees are saying online on their behalf, and these same employees are unaware of the impact of what they say on their company’s reputation. They may think they are defending the company by editing a Wikipedia entry, commenting on a negative blog post, or emailing the webmaster of a ‘sucks’ site, but without a proper understanding of the unwritten rules of engagement online they could be creating a potential public relations crisis.
So even if you think you don’t need an employee blogging policy, you absolutely must have a
social media policy.
Every policy will need tailoring to the company in question, but here’s what we recommend everyone include:
- What you can and can’t say – legal and moral obligations extend to comments left on others’ blogs, not just your own.
- Who to consult if you’re unsure – perhaps the line manager isn’t the most appropriate person to advise.
- Guidelines for specific websites – for example, it’s against Wikipedia’s policy to edit your own entry. Your employees need to know this too.
- How to decide whether to engage – there are some arguments you just won’t win, so engagement may be a fruitless exercise.
- Anonymity – don’t be (you generally aren’t anyway, even if you think you are).
- Pretending to be someone else – it may sound harmless to pretend to be someone you aren’t, but if you get found out the impact on the company’s reputation can be severe.
- Letting others know about it – harness your employees to be the eyes and ears for interesting online conversation taking place about your company.
When you’re done with your employees, we suggest you also extend the same rules to your marketing and communications agencies.
If you found this interesting, I recommend you review the other articles in this edition: