Creating Your Employee Online Reputation Policy

Some companies still believe they can get away with having an ad hoc sort of social media policy for their employees where they’re pretty laid back and only institute rules after there’s been a crisis resulting from an unfortunate recent event. These days, however, online conflagrations can escalate to dangerous levels within a couple of hours if gone unchecked and cause quite a stir within an organization, to say the least.

There are too many case studies out there already about major losses incurred by actual employees from the organizations that suffered the embarrassing social media frenzy. Here are a few examples of activity that unfortunately happen all the time and need a clear guideline before your organization’s online reputation management gets out of hand because of “friendly fire.”

Rude commenting on the company’s profile by accident

Griping about management online

Gossiping about coworkers online

Taking unauthorized office pictures and sharing them online

Posting negative rants (by disgruntled employees who still have access to company profiles)

Taking disturbing or foolish videos while at work and posting them online

Because many people in a given work population socialize online, you should get your crisis team together and create an employee online reputation policy that provides guidelines for behavior. This policy should

Be realistic

Be flexible

Be able to accommodate new technologies or social network trends

Not invade anybody’s individual privacy

Not compromise your organization’s privacy

Give positive examples of what’s acceptable

It’s important to be consistently decisive. Include some clearly stated actions that your organization will always take when confronted by employees breaking the social media policy. This ought to include

Issuing a warning to offenders. This should be written, dated, and signed by the offender, acknowledging that she has been informed/warned.

Dismissing employees who don’t comply.

Modeling your process after others

Organizations often prefer to model their own behavior on that of their peers. Creating an employee online policy is no different. If your team would be more comfortable working this way, here are a few examples they can use:

Social Media Governance: Database (see Figure 4-3) including more than 195 companies, includes

• Nonprofits

• Government agencies

Dave Fleet: Database of policies to inspire and inform you

Compliance Building: Database of policies to inspire and inform you

Toolkit Cafe: Sells a social media policies toolkit that can streamline your process

It’s interesting to note that many of these companies have a couple of different policies covering a range of online reputation management topics. For example, in Figure 4-3, About.com offers both a Template: Blogging and Social Media Policy and a Template: Internet and Email policy. You may find that you’re more comfortable devising separate strategies for your organization, depending on its size.

When your employee social media policy is so complex it resembles the tax code, it’s time to simplify. (See Figure 4-4.) My best advice is to keep referring back to the timeless KISS principle. Adding too much complication makes things hard for everybody to understand and follow.

Always be positive and proactive. People always respond better to positive direction instead of a list of don’ts. (See Figure 4-5.)

Putting a name on your policy

As you research and start developing your own approach to writing an employee social media policy for your organization, you’ll see all kinds of names that refer to basically the same thing, with some refinements. There is no codified system for naming your particular organization’s social media policy, though you can search for examples by using the following terms:

Online social media principles

Social media guidance

Staff/volunteer presence on social networking sites

Facebook policy

Online community guidelines

Using social media internally

Using social media to communicate with the public

Internal postings policy

Social media staff guidelines

Implementing your new policy

Changes often take time to implement. Make sure that when you present your new policy to employees, you do so in a way that gives them time to read, digest, and adjust without feeling cornered or threatened. After all, your main focus is to avoid trouble, not to create resentments.

You will have the easiest time introducing this policy to your newly hired employees, who haven’t developed any routines or habits that will need to be broken. However, give existing employees at least 30 days to get used to the new policy, and be there to answer any questions. Be willing to refine your policy as good questions are asked that show where a point here or there may not be as clear as it looked when you were writing it at night while sipping something relaxing. Everybody gets to learn through this process together.

You even may have compelling internal issues brought to light and be able to act on them proactively, which is always preferable to waiting until they hit crisis mode.