Social media has arrived and has seeped into every facet of our lives — including our work. A week doesn’t go by where the news isn’t filled with an employee, celebrity or professional athlete losing endorsements or their job as a result of their activities on social media. Americans are spending nearly 16 hours a month on Facebook, with 50% of users logging into the world’s most popular social network every single day. Your corporate HR team, senior leaders and employment law attorneys are struggling to find a balance between employees work and personal lives when it comes to monitoring their employee’s online activities, Facebook included.

Social media at work presents a particular predicament, as employment law remains murky while adoption by corporate decision-makers also lags. A recent global study by DLA Piper Shift provided solid insights into social media in the workplace. The study, released in October 2011, found that 30% of companies admitted to disciplining their employees on their social media activities.

This phenomenon shouldn’t come as a surprise. A growing percentage of companies are integrating social media into their marketing and customer engagement strategies — and most recently their candidate recruitment and employee engagement efforts. For employees, who are concerned about being fired for Facebook, consider the following tips and suggestions to avoid disciplinary action altogether:

• Lock down your profiles. Obviously, the safe choice is to avoiding friending anyone from work, including your co-workers or boss — but most people do it anyway. A survey of young professionals as part of a 2011 Cisco Technology report found 70% admitted to friending their boss or co-worker. Take advantage of the privacy features within Facebook and create lists, keeping unwanted visitors away from private photos, tagged posts and information. But keep in mind that even deleted or private messages can live on with a quick screenshot e-mailed to your supervisor.
• Private messages are not private. When it comes to the workplace and the world of employment law, private messages on social networking sites are discoverable in court. This means that messages between friends and colleagues on social networks can be used as part of the legal investigation process. These messages are electronic conversations similar to e-mail and are being treated as such.
• Don’t trust Facebook. Facebook has been known for their privacy issues in the past, and yet we, as individuals, place blind faith in a company who often holds the very key to our digital life. Avoid providing very personal information including your date of birth, religious information, or other protected topics that companies can use when making employment decision like hiring, promotions or salary increases in the United States. This information, known as protected classes (e.g. age, sex, religion, disability, pregnancy, race/color, and nation origin), is not to be used by employers to make employment decisions, and yet this information is easily accessible via personal social media profiles like Facebook. Keep in mind that companies are increasingly using social media as a form of an online background check. Keep your protected information protected.
• Read your social media policy. A growing number of companies are adding social media policies to their employee policy manuals, as they should. Take the time to read your organization’s policy and understand the guidelines they have put in place. Depending on your position within your organization, consider sitting down with your senior leaders, particularly your human resource teams, to discuss with them about how you are using Facebook to communicate both personally and professionally. Work to educate and open the eyes of those keepers of policy and procedure.

Facebook and other social networks are a cultural shift in the making. Remember that for many, social networking is a foreign and frivolous phenomenon with many legal and workplace risks. Keep yourself out of the headlines and avoid being fired for Facebook.

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With ad hoc social media strategies scattered throughout different networks, Kalnoskas knew that it was time to set up a unified strategy for all of Texas Instruments to follow. At our recent BlogWell event, Kalnoskas shared how they did it.

A few of her tips:

• Establish a core social media team. Kalnoskas brought in representatives from all the groups in the company who used social media – legal, HR, corporate communications, etc. They worked together to decide on a unified message for the company and shared their best practices for social media.
• Train conversation agents. There were guidelines in place for employees representing the company online, but Kalnoskas and her team took it further and created a 50-minute training program for all conversation agents to complete to become certified.
• Create a social media toolkit as a foundation for social media within the organization. Their toolkit includes key contacts, the approval process, a checklist for getting started and best practices for using current accounts.

Watch Kalnoskas’s case study:

Click here to view the embedded video.

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SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social-media practices and issues.

Last week’s poll question: Should businesses restrict the use of social networking during work hours?

• All employees should have complete freedom to surf the Web, including social sites — 42.94%
• Only some departments should have access to social networks — 41.72%
• All employees should be prohibited from using social networks on company time — 15.34%

If employees are allowed to use social-networking sites during work hours, they may be among the few lucky ones. Many companies are still hesitant to allow employees to engage in social networking while at work, citing fears of lost productivity, brand damage, security risks and leakage of confidential information. These are probably the same reasons 57% of the SmartBrief readers who took the poll said some or all of a company’s workforce should be prohibited from using social networks at work.

My two cents is that the same businesses that are prohibiting the use of social networking are the ones that have not embraced and adopted the changes caused by social media. It is best to show your employees you trust them and let them spread their wings because they are your brand champions — your No. 1 influencers. If you can trust employees to run and help grow a business, surely you can trust them to be online.

With the right social-media guidelines in place, as well as some training and awareness, companies can educate their employees on proper social-media usage and encourage them to network responsibly. By allowing all employees the freedom to surf the Web and use social media, as favored by about 43% of our readers, companies will experience many benefits.

Here are a few other rewards of allowing employees to access social networking on company time. Such access:

• Empowers employees and boosts morale
• Shows you trust employees to act responsibly
• Increases knowledge of social media
• Extends brand awareness across the Web
• Provides access to intellectual capital
• Facilitates problem-solving
• Speeds up the communication process
• Casts a wider net for talent acquisition
• Showcases company culture and values
• Helps a social-media strategy thrive

What are some other risks and benefits of allowing employees to social media in the workplace?

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To get better of idea of how companies can protect themselves from social-media risks, I asked Harriet Pearson, IBM’s vice president, security counsel and chief privacy officer, to explain what goes into a great social-media policy. Here’s what she had to say:

What are some of the biggest unnecessary risks you see companies taking in the social-media space?

One of the biggest unnecessary risks that companies take is not having a social-media policy. While social-media tools present opportunities and potential for productive, collaborative relationships, they also can raise issues related to information security, disclosure of intellectual property or confidential information, privacy and governance. Organizations should acknowledge that social-media tools exist (and that employees are actively using them) and establish policies that clarify the boundaries and guidelines of appropriate use for their employees.

Should companies build their social-media plans from scratch? If so, what should they bear in mind? If not, what would you recommend using as a template?

Organizations should assess their individual exposures and risks in the social-media space based on the industry that they’re in, the regulations they are subject to and the scope of their employees’ use. It would be beneficial to explore what others have done and learn from and/or model their progress, but companies need to tailor their policies to suit their needs. A policy clearly stating what a company’s employees should or should not do will be based on an understanding of which employees are using the tools and how they’re using it.

IBM’s published social-computing guidelines on its website are revised biennially with input from employees. How did the company originally develop these policies? How has this collaborative process developed between the legal team and actual users of these social platforms?

In 2005, IBM became one of the first corporations to establish guidelines for employee behavior in social-computing environments. These guidelines, initially known as the company’s blogging guidelines, were initiated and written by interested employees and ultimately endorsed by the company. They were expanded to cover social computing generally in 2008 and are now known as the IBM Social Computing Guidelines. Since then, we have taken a collaborative approach to developing and evolving the social-computing guidelines, getting employee input on revisions (using wiki technology); the guidelines were updated in 2008 and 2010.

From IBM’s policy-creation process, what best practices can you share? How detailed does a social-media policy need to be?

Organizations should have an understanding of how their employees will use social-media tools. The guidelines shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. Know your organization’s industry and what regulations you are under. It is imperative to establish social-media-conduct guidelines that set the ground rules for their participation. These guidelines would be, to a certain extent, common sense — don’t harass, don’t use obscene language, be respectful and so forth. But they would also cover corporate policy regarding such things as disclosure of confidential information and intellectual property, and they should open the communication channels between employees and management and legal in the event they have questions or concerns regarding whether something should or can be posted.

IBM also has an internal social network called Beehive. Have you created separate guidelines and policies for using this internal network? Do you and your team use Beehive?

There are generally no separate guidelines for Beehive (now known as SocialBlue) or other internal social-media tools used at IBM. The social-computing guidelines that we established cover both internal and external social- media applications, and build on the company’s foundational Business Conduct Guidelines, which apply to all employees regardless of medium.

Pearson will speaking at the upcoming Social Media Legal Risks and Strategy conference in Washington, D.C., from Jan. 12 to 14.

What does your company’s social-media policy look like? How has it evolved over time?

Image credit: peepo, via iStockPhoto

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As we forage ahead into new social-media spaces, this lesson becomes extremely important. Writing a corporate social-media strategy is one way to keep your employees on message –- but another important another big piece of the puzzle is who you hire to execute your strategy. At this summer’s Buzz 2010 social-media event for association leaders, Charlene Li noted that to represent an organization effectively, social-media hires need a stellar combination of experience and the trust of their peers.

As companies become more “profersonal” (personal/professional) on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social platforms, it becomes increasingly important to ensure they have the right people representing their business and its mission in the social space.

When I applied for the social-media-practitioner position at SmartBrief, the job description outlined the following qualifications:

• Passion for social media and platforms. An understanding of the various platforms, how they work and how they can leverage each other is necessary to develop and execute this type of work.
• A people person with solid communication skills and a proven track record of translating online relationships offline.
• A great collaborator to work with teams across the company. Social media touches every department at SmartBrief in some capacity — and a social-media practitioner must be a team player to ensure that all departments and their goals have a voice.
• A keen listener who can watch the conversations about our brand and jump in when necessary.
• A strategist with a solid understanding of our business who could set and achieve specific goals.

What do you look for in a social-media practitioner? What level of experience (in social media, marketing, communications, education (MBA) etc.) do you expect or require?

If you are hiring a social-media practicioner, check out SmartBrief on Social Media’s new job board. Post your listing today!

Image credit: SchulteProductions , via iStockphoto

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In his recent BlogWell case study, Xerox’s Duane Schulz explained how a small group of social-media believers got a bunch of departments engaging fans and customers through social media. A few of his big ideas:

• Find a unifying event. Schulz’s team focused on their ColorQube product launch as an opportunity for social-media integration.
• A registration process is more efficient than an approval process. Schulz says his team benefits from having established policies that define what they can do rather than an approval process. It makes it easier for social initiatives to move forward while still ensuring brand consistency.
• Use the momentum. Taking advantage of the brand’s focus on social media, Schulz and his team established a hub-and-spoke organizational model, expanded the social-media marketing team, established further guidelines and registrations, and created a social-media community center.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you like this presentation, be sure to check out our upcoming BlogWell in Chicago on Aug. 11.

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As one of the early adopters of social media, Intel is one of the most experienced big brands using these tools.

In his BlogWell case study, Intel’s Bryan Rhoads shared how their social-media program is maturing into a core resource for their brand. A few of his key points:

• Use G.R.O.W. to build a social-media campaign. Brian’s acronym starts with “grassroots” (learning from pioneers); followed by “results” (pilot projects) and “operationalizing” (creating governance and guidance); and ends with “widespread” (establishing global strategies).
• Create a great training program. Intel has one of the most sophisticated social-media training programs of any big brand, featuring everything from training on tools, to policy discussions, to best practices.
• Use simple engagement guidelines. Intel’s policies boil down to basic premises: Individuals are taught to stick to their subject matter expertise, to speak in first-person and to use basic disclaimers when appropriate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you like this presentation, be sure to check out our upcoming BlogWell in Chicago on August 11.

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Have you noticed a trend among companies that previously forbade the use of sites such as Facebook in the workplace updating their staff policy manuals to reflect the increase of employees using social media for work?
Yes, and this is great!  Every organization should have a written social-media policy that includes the following points:

• Define what you mean by social media — for most, social media means an online forum for two-way communication.
• Clarify who will own work products created on social-media sites.
• Spell out the type of information considered proprietary or confidential  — customer details, company financial data, etc. — and say that it should never be shared on these sites.
• Spell out the type of potentially damaging information that should never be shared on these sites: offensive comments, libelous statements, illegal activity, etc.
• Determine which employees should be contributing to social-media sites on behalf of the company and what activities these individuals should be engaged in.

Should someone be monitoring whether or not social media is being used appropriately?
Yes, you should to have someone — or multiple someones — in the communications department monitoring what is being said in social media, both from an internal and external perspective. It is the same thing as having a staff member monitor what is said in the press. The conversation will take place with or without you and it’s always best to be informed. It’s not as easy to dictate your image as it used to be, but strategic social-media monitoring and participation can help you shape it.

On Tuesday, July 20, Levit will share more about managing workplace issues related to social media as part of our Buzz2010 event series in Washington, D.C. Space is limited — sign up here.

Image credit, Alexandra Levit

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In his BlogWell San Diego case study presentation, “Social Media Integration & Strategy,” the Navy’s director of emerging media integration, Scott McIlnay, explained how they’re engaging and managing all of their social-media stakeholders.

Some of my favorite takeaways:

• Decentralized organizations need help collaborating on social media. Like many big brands, lots of individuals and teams within the Navy use social media to the benefit of the larger organization. Scott and his team use weekly e-mails and collaborative wikis to keep stakeholders up-to-date on relevant social-media developments.
• Social media isn’t just for brand-to-consumer conversations. Through their NavyForMoms network, the Navy is fostering conversations between mothers of kids in the Navy and moms who have questions about Navy life for their kids.
• Basic guidelines are helpful while you’re building your formal policy. While they’re finalizing their training program, they’re guiding everyone to be safe and smart with social media through the simple reminder “Loose tweets sink fleets.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And if you dig this presentation, you might check out our upcoming BlogWell events in Cincinnati (April 7) and Seattle (May 5).

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