Social Media Policy - Does your company have one?

There is a lot of discussion these days about privacy in the workplace, which leads us to the topic of a companies’ need for social media policy .. or at the very least preliminary guidelines that effectively turn into policy. Technology today incorporates the tendency to make public information or misinformation about your product or company.  These are slippery issues that must be addressed with your employees and made clear to those who access your site.

At NFi, we encourage the individuality of our team.  However, we have also put in place a social media policy which emphasizes the  importance of esteem towards the company as a whole.

So, how are other companies connecting the dots on these guidelines/ policies; and what course of action is being taken to build well developed policies on the use of social media?   IBM has provided their policy, publicly for anyone to read.   If you are looking to establish a social media policy, you might want to refer to this rather lengthy, nonetheless, informative expose for some ideas.

Also, Daniel Hoang in his blog on Social Media policies offers a few good resources for drafting your social media policies:

•    IBM Social Computing Guidelines - IBM has a well developed set of policies for social computing.
•    Sun Microsystems Guidelines on Public Discourse – SUN also has well developed guidelines for publishing online.
•    Harvard Law Blogging Policy – They have a very legalese disclaimer language you can use for your own blog.
•    Ernst & Young Facebook Page – E&Y has a well developed careers page on Facebook. They are clear with their participants on their policies.

If you are planning to develop social media guidelines, a thought to consider is this quote from Mashable on Social Media, “employees who share confidential or proprietary information do so at the risk of losing their job and possibly even ending up a defendant in a civil lawsuit. At the very least, companies will seriously question the judgment of an employee who shares confidential or proprietary information via social media. It’s a good idea to make sure all of this is clearly laid out in your social media policy.”

Why not post what you think about this topic and share some of your thoughts for drafting your company’s personal/professional modus operandi.   We’d love to hear from you!