Appendix: Social Media Governance
ORGANIZATIONS CONSIDERING DEPLOYING SOCIAL software for communication and learning are often concerned with how to govern its use. Should they be highly directive in their policies or trust people to use common sense? The most effective policies we’ve seen fall somewhere in between: comprehensive and educational, using the guidelines to coach employees through how they are expected to behave online and treating people as trustworthy.
Chris Boudreaux, a digital strategist and technologist, created SocialMediaGovernance.com, a site full of tools and resources to help managers and leaders with social applications. The policies page on this site provides examples of social media guidelines from organizations of all sizes in the public and private sectors.
IBM
An exemplar in social media governance is IBM, whose official guidelines aim to provide helpful, practical advice—and also to protect both IBM employees and IBM itself, as the company embraces social computing. The guidelines were created in 2005 by IBMers collaborating with one another using an internal wiki. In 2008 and 2010, IBM employees revised the guidelines in light of evolving technologies and online social tools. These efforts broadened the scope of the existing guidelines to include all forms of social computing.
They begin with a request to those reading the guidelines: “Have you seen social computing behavior or content that is not in keeping with these guidelines? Report inappropriate content via email” (which is sent to a content administrator who looks into the report).
IBM Social Computing Guidelines: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networks, Virtual Worlds, and Social Media
Responsible Engagement in Innovation and Dialogue
Online collaboration platforms are fundamentally changing the way IBMers work and engage with each other, clients, and partners.
IBM is increasingly exploring how online discourse through social computing can empower IBMers as global professionals, innovators, and citizens. These individual interactions represent a new model: not mass communications, but masses of communicators. Through these interactions, IBM’s greatest asset—the expertise of its employees—can be shared with clients, shareholders, and the communities in which it operates.
Therefore, it is very much in IBM’s interest—and, we believe, in each IBMer’s own—to be aware of and participate in this sphere of information, interaction, and idea exchange:
To learn: As an innovation-based company, we believe in the importance of open exchange—between IBM and its clients and among the many constituents of our emerging business and societal ecosystem—for learning. Social computing is an important arena for organizational and individual development.
To contribute: IBM—as a business, as an innovator, and as a corporate citizen—makes important contributions to the world, to the future of business and technology, and to public dialogue on a broad range of societal issues. Because our business activities provide transformational insight and high-value innovation for business, government, education, healthcare, and nongovernmental organizations, it is important for IBM and IBMers to share with the world the exciting things we’re learning and doing.
In 1997, IBM actively recommended that its employees use the Internet—at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access. In 2003, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate. We continue to advocate IBMers’ responsible involvement today in this rapidly growing environment of relationship, learning, and collaboration.1
Nordstrom
The retail giant Nordstrom provides social media guidelines for its employees to help them connect with customers and others during working hours. The company explains that these guidelines are intended to help employees understand how to represent Nordstrom in the virtual world. The guidelines encourage employees to do the following:
• Use good judgment
• Be respectful
• Be responsible and ethical
• Be humble
• Be a good listener
• Avoid conflicts of interest.
In addition, the company asks employees not to share confidential information or private and personal information—“yours, customers’ and co-workers’.” And they ask employees to be cautious with respect to images, other sites, and endorsements.2
Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic operates a blog where patients, family, friends, and clinic staff may share stories. Comments are reviewed before they’re posted, and those that are off-topic or clearly promoting a commercial product are blocked. The guidelines encourage civility and mutual respect.
The Mayo Clinic also has a set of guidelines for employees and students who use social media of all types. These guidelines apply whether employees and students are posting to their own sites or commenting on other sites.
Here are some of the guidelines:
• Follow Mayo Clinic guidelines regarding confidential and proprietary information, including patient confidentiality.
• Write in the first person and make it clear you are writing on your own behalf, not that of the Mayo Clinic.
• If you comment about Mayo on public internets, identify your connection to Mayo Clinic and your role.
• Be professional, use good judgment, and be accurate and honest in your communications.
• Ensure that your social media activity does not interfere with your work commitments.
• Mayo Clinic strongly discourages “friending” of patients on social media websites.
• Mayo Clinic does not endorse people, products, services, and organizations.3
Notes
1. Introduction to IBM Social Computing Guidelines: www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html; see also: www.socialmediagovernance.com/policies/.
2. From the Nordstrom social networking guidelines: www.shop.nordstrom.com/c/social-networking-guidelines; see also: www.socialmediagovernance.com/policies/.
3. From the Mayo Clinic employee guidelines: www.sharing.mayoclinic.org/guidelines/for-mayo-clinic-employees/; see also: www.socialmediagovernance.com/policies/.