Even if your business itself doesn’t feature on social media, your employees almost certainly will. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram… The list goes on.
But even though your employees are generally using social media in their own time, the things they post and share can still affect your business. That’s why it is smart to develop a social media policy for your staff before anything happens.
Get your employees involved
When you’re writing your social media policy, getting your staff involved can help. It means that they have the opportunity to discuss the policy contents and how it will affect them. This is particularly important if you’re not all that clued-up about social media.
What the policy should cover
There are some basics the policy should cover:
- Posting anything which could bring the company into disrepute. Of particular concern is staff sharing photos, videos, or status updates which show them engaged in illegal activity, or which breaches regulations for your industry. This includes when they’re off the clock, especially if they’re wearing uniform, or it happens on business premises.
- Posting any confidential information, including confidential information related to your clients or customers.
- Posting non-confidential but negative information about your company, customers, or clients. This can be tricky to enforce reasonably – almost everyone has griped about a bad day at work on social media. But when identifiable information gets posted, or a gripe turns into defamation, that can cause your company problems.
- Misrepresenting the company – for example by implying that the employee speaks on behalf of the company, or an employee claims to have a more senior role than they do.
But beyond these ground rules, there is a lot of grey area that it is worth hashing out with your employees.
- What kind of affiliation can employees publicly claim on social media? Is it okay for them to tag your company in photos, even innocuous ones?
- Disclosure – when should an employee mention that they work for you or work in your industry? And if they do so, how should they emphasise that they are posting on their own behalf, not the company’s?
- What happens if an employee posts something offensive but completely unrelated to your business? Once the internet cranks up and something goes viral, the repercussions can be massive – businesses have experienced negative media attention or even faced boycotts because of photos or comments which an employee posted.
- Are employees expected to uphold the company’s reputation even in their non-work hours and activities? How does that translate to social media? If someone else posts a photo of your employee behaving badly and tags them in it, what should the employee do?
Being aware of what goes online
The other thing your social media policy can do is provide an important reminder to your employees about the nature of the internet.
- Once something is online, it is there forever. There are no take-backs. Deleting the incriminating post or photo is no good if someone has taken a screenshot, or it’s already been shared to other people. And that can come back to bite the original poster years after the fact.
- There is no such thing as private on social media. Things like privacy settings only limit the number of people your original post or photo goes to. It doesn’t limit the number that those people can then share it to. That includes messaging apps.