A sensible approach to social media

After all it only takes one 'bad apple' etc.....

'.. Each of our employees is encouraged to set up and maintain a presence on “The Big 3” social media channels ..' - isn't this as bad as blocking social media? If a company 'encourages' employees then surely there is an implicit threat that if they don't adhere to company policy then their advancement though the organisation will be hampered?

There is no mention about what happens if this trust is abused or how to deal with the minority who do '.. represent us poorly ..'

If this concept of total trust was taken in a wider context - why do we need laws etc. after all we could all work on trust; or does the author know something that the rest of the universe has missed?

Nothing in life is all 'upside' and greater balance in the article would not have gone amiss
 

We used to have trust based internet policies and found that a certain hardcore element would abuse this trust on social network sites by spending the majority of their work day chatting with friends. We introduced a policy with guidlines restricting use on social network sites to lunch hours, but again this was abused. Eventually we had to install dedicated software where we could set up a period for blocking and allowing specific sites. Still staff found ways to abuse the system and eventually Facebook in particular was blacklisted by the server. The trouble we have now is that so many legitimate sites have links to Facebook that they also get blocked by our moitoring software. Basically we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.

All well and good blocking sites like Facebook but people find other ways to waste time at work. We had problems with Blackberry Messenger - I don't have a blackberry, I think they feel cheap and nasty but many of our staff do have them and they spend parts of the day instant messaging their friends. We have had to put in place a policy which states they should only be using this for 5 mintues every couple of hours or when they make themselves a cup of tea. Most staff we trust no problem but we have had some bad eggs who saw it as a right to spend the day talking to friends and then wondered why we woudn't pay them. Facebook we have a small problem with. We encourange all staff to use LinkedIn - fantastic site for business! Not many staff have twitter accounts so not much of an issue

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Accountants for Contractors

When the internet and email first became useful business tools, this was an issue. When mobile phones first became popular and wide-spread, it was an issue. Trust your staff or not? It's up to you. If you can't trust the staff to stick to reasonable policies and feel like they generally want to do their best, why do you want them as employees?

I'd agree with Brett - the majority of people are trustworthy, honest and want to do a good job. But, as others have said, there are a few who aren't to be trusted. Managers/leaders need to find ways to remove the issue / problem - and that might the person, rather than the software/website. Whilst I'm not advocating getting rid of someone who spends a few minutes "playing" on facebook, it IS possible to monitor web usage, mostly automatically, and highlight and deal with repeat offenders. It IS possible to block unwanted downloads and staff may need to get special permission to use sites for particular assignments and projects - all this is about managing the business and the associated risks.

Sue

@scohen - we are not generally talking about the majority but as always a minority who spolit it for everyone else. So in order to have damage limitation it is the medium that is blocked

• getting rid of the untrustworthy personnel - sometimes one is not aware until too late, after the damage has been done! Getting rid of people is simply not an easy task expecially if they are percieved as a threat but have not yet actually done anything wrong
• it is possible to monitor usage but conditions of employment may need to be revised to accommodate this
• you might be able to block sites but with employees that know what they are doing this could be difficult - see programs such as http://www.securitykiss.com/sk/index.php
• you would probably need to produce usage rules etc. for staff

Everything is possible, it just boils down to how much effort needs to be put in to ensure the risk is managed - and does this justify the cost benefit

And finally to cap it all at the end of the day the staff may not be at fault - especially with a constantly changing FaceBook privacy policy geared to benefit FaceBook rather than the user

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8070513/Facebook-admits-inadvertent-privacy-breach.html

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/truste-responds-to-facebook-privacy-problems/1544
 

JC - indeed. I don't wish to imply it's easy. I am sure there are likely to be benefits to the business of using social media. Like all marketing activity, it takes time to tell, and you may be scuppered by overly restrictive policies, before you've really evaluated the benefit.

You only have to look at the number of people on LinkedIn, which is a business networking site, with personal email addresses because they can't access it from work (and that's not including the ones who are job searching etc) to know that many businesses are taking this very slowly.