Jobhop Jobhop's blog : Be A Responsible Employer Have a Social Media Policy
Many employers think social media should be banned from the office, some think that social media stops production. Aren’t you already a responsible employer if you’ve banned social media?
Let me tell you this, if you have a lack of production in your office that’s a performance issue not a social media issue.
Social media grows everyday and it’s now a natural way for people to communicate, your customers communicate this way.
If you ban social media from the office, would you ban your employees from using their phones? What about when they go home? In the old days it was a chat on the landline with Mum “Yes Mum Grumpy boss said No to Twitter again even though I tried to show him the benefits” These days Mum is on Twitter & the message is also seen by 5,000 other people!
20million U.S households don’t have a landline phone they use their mobiles and they access social media from their mobiles. This is the way it’s going, soon all conversations will be done using some type of social media.
There are many companies that use social media well within their organisations, from marketing the business to allowing ambassadors to naturally rise and preach the good message of the company to others.
If you’re a good employer wouldn’t you want your staff to tell many others, let others know about the great training, how your company is planning to expand and that you’re looking for new talent. This doesn’t mean you’re not a responsible employer.
As a responsible employer you owe it to your employees to give them a social media policy and show them how to use Social Media for the good of the company
Joe Gordon is widely known as the first British blogger to be dismissed for work-related comments made online. Gordon wrote a general, allegedly humorous, blog, entitled the Woolamaloo Gazette, about his life which sometimes touched on his work at Waterstone’s. The comments about work included complaining about shift work, he called his manager an “evil boss” and a “cheeky smegger” for asking him to work on a bank holiday. He also referred to the firm as “Bastardstone’s” Gordon was dismissed from his position in early 2005 following a disciplinary hearing, but he successfully challenged the decision on appeal, following the case’s high profile in the media.
Catherine Sanderson is a British woman who worked in France for a British law firm. Her blog was not strictly work-focused either but did occasionally contain references to her employers, without identifying them by name. Her comments about her employers mainly involved gently mocking the conservatism of some of the senior partners. When Sanderson’s employers discovered her blog, she was dismissed, provoking a huge storm of negative publicity. Sanderson took her employers to tribunal and received compensation for wrongful dismissal.
In these two cases and many more similar cases employees have been dismissed, many of those dismissals have been overturned or payouts have been awarded for wrongful dismissals. It’s easy to see why, the argument being they weren’t told that they couldn’t.
You know social media isn’t going to go away so you need to embrace it and educate your employees on it’s many uses.
Show them the good way they can use it, post photos of work charity events, videos of a great day in the office, great messages they can share with online communities.
Show them how you wouldn’t want it to be used, I say show as visual information is absorbed quicker.
Then make sure that everyone is familiar with the Social Media policy.
I would also recommend a private networking platform which just your organisation gets to use, you are then giving your employees a platform to freely discuss employment conditions.
That way you are giving your employees many options of communication and if your employees feel better communicating this way then isn’t it better to keep it contained if there’s ever a grievance.
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Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk
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- Social media