Year of Social Media: Ready or Not?
January 14th, 2010As we head into 2010, the so called year of social media, are you ready for the HR implications?
For SMEs and large employers alike, social media sites and their use at work are rapidly becoming a nightmare.
Of course, the business benefits of social media are well known – even if they are not fully understood or explored by many smaller businesses. But when it comes to employees using social media in office time or what they may say about your business or fellow employees, the potential for problems is immense.
From being held responsible for cyber bullying if comments are posted at work, to potential libel action, the implications are, as I say, huge. See Brodies’ solicitor Gillian Mair’s HRZone article Social Notworking – The Dark Side of Social Networking for more.
The solution is to have a robust social media policy and internet and email use policy clearly stating what is and what is not acceptable. And then to monitor them. The CIPD’s Internet and Email Policy Factsheet is a good starting point.
According to Social Media Meets the Employee Handbook, some large companies have social media policies that extend to 15 plus pages. IBM’s social computing guidelines, for example, are long, but well rated. For the SME a simple, clear and concise side of A4 might suffice, provided it covers the essentials of what is expected and what the repercussions will be if staff do not abide by the policy. The policy also needs to make it clear that it will be applied to everyone, whatever their level in the organisation.
On a related note – well, it’s still about consuming media at work – recently one of our clients had to talk to a new employee about her attitude to work. They did not like her listening to music on headphones as she entered information on their database.
Their view was mistakes could be made if her mind was not fully on the job. Her view was that it helped her to concentrate.
So who is right?
Well, that is irrelevant. What matters is the employer making it clear, from the outset, what is acceptable behaviour at work – much like the internet and email policy or the social media policy. From there, the road is a much less rocky place.
Tags: HR management
Posted by Elspeth Watt
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January 14th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Good advice Elspeth. I find one of the problems is differing views around the organisation about what is acceptable. Senior managers tend to think they should be allowed to access these networks, and junior staff should not. IT often consider it unacceptable due to viruses, and some managers believe it is a waste of time.
One client had a problem recently with access to ‘personal’ websites. Their policy was very clear – no personal use was allowed, and employees sign a document stating they understand this. So it was clearly a breach of rules and disciplinary action ensued.
For the organisation that is not so clear, and perhaps allows access to social media sites at break times, there can be problems when breaks are taken outside of usual times. To the casual passerby it seems as if the sites are being accessed all the time. Another client recently had a problem when a manager who had banned employee use of social networking sites caught a team member accessing Facebook. But the individual was using a PC in another department (whose manager did allow it) and was on their break. So was disciplinary action fair? A huge discussion ensued about fairness and application of the policy. The company now has an official policy that does not allow any personal use of social media websites.
Tara Lloyd, Calibre HR & Training
January 15th, 2010 at 3:47 am
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March 12th, 2010 at 10:08 am
The question here is really wether you trust your employees or you don’t?
People use social media at home and if you stop them using it at work two things are for sure they will find a way and you will be running disciplinaries.
Trust them – 99.99999% of employees are good!
Scott
http://mcarthursrant.blogspot.com/
March 21st, 2010 at 7:39 pm
I totally agree that this is all about about trust.
We suggest to clients that trust and training go hand in hand. But there too often comes a time when the one or two who might take advantage of what they see as lax supervision have to be encouraged to work in more cohesive way. So training for all sides is critical. Perhaps even more so for managers and supervisors who are often very insecure in handling new technology themselves and perhaps not aware of the business benefits of social networking.
So it is about setting some parameters for a whole new world of work. The media savvy generation can seemingly multi task in ways that others find difficult to comprehend. Managing and motivating this group without turning them off will be a challenge.
Trust is important, but trust has to be earned too. In the meantime some basic ground rules might make for a more even playing field for all.