Social Media – is your business protected?

The use of social media has grown phenomenally in the past few years and more and more businesses are using it as a tool to help market their business and talk to their customers.  Sites such as Facebook and Twitter reach global audiences very fast and can have significant consequences – good and bad.

But what about the use of social media in the workplace by your workers? 

The numbers of people who use social media and social networking sites presents us with a very strong case for developing rules and policies of how businesses should deal with the use of social media in the workplace.  Reports are already suggesting that the misuse of the internet and social media by workers is already costing our economy billions of pounds each year. So, what measures can you put in place to help protect the business? 

Protecting the business need not be about having draconian policies in place but should be about being sensible, reasonable and proportionate to the issues which your business may face.

Adopt a clear policy on the use of social media.  It is likely that you may already have a computer and internet use policy in the business so this would be a good starting point. 

Ensure that social networking sites are clearly covered by the policy and decide what access rights you will give for the use of the internet. Have very clear guidelines of what employees can and cannot say about the Company.  If employees do post on the Company Facebook pages or Twitter accounts and are representing the Company, make sure they know what they can or can’t do.

Remind employees about their own private social networking sites and that it is their responsibility to ensure that they do not include comments or photographs about the Company or its employees which could damage the Company’s reputation.

 

Set out in the policy how you will deal with issues surrounding the misuse of social media referring to your disciplinary procedure.  Make sure you update your disciplinary procedure to give examples of what would be considered misconduct and what would constitute gross misconduct.

Finally, communicate to your employees so that they are fully aware of your rules surrounding the use of social media sites.