Appendix: Governance
Organizations considering deploying social software for communication and learning are often concerned with how to govern its use. Should they be heavy-handed 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, an executive at Converseon, 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, policies, and templates from organizations of all sizes in the public and private sectors. |
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 by IBMers collaborating with one another using an internal wiki and have evolved several times since first established in 2005 as new technologies and social networking tools become available.
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).
The retail giant Nordstrom provides social networking guidelines for its employees to help them dialogue and connect with current and future customers and with each other. The company explains that these guidelines are intended to help employees understand how to “share thoughts, views, and perspectives—as a Nordstrom representative—in the virtual world.” Additional detail for each guideline is provided on the company’s website—organized under six main headings:
Use good judgment.
Be respectful.
Be transparent.
Be humble.
Be human.
Be a good listener.
In addition, the company asks employees not to share
confidential information
private and personal information—yours’, customers’, and coworkers’.
With an estimated 5,000 conversations per day about the company on social media outlets, The Coca-Cola Company provides its Online Social Media Principles on its website “to help empower our associates to participate in this new frontier of marketing and communications, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands.”
The company explains that these principles are intended to outline how the company’s shared values should be demonstrated in the social media space and encourages its employees (referred to as associates) to explore and engage in social media communities at a level in which they feel comfortable. The company advises associates to “have fun, but be smart” and to “use sound judgment and common sense” in online worlds just as you would do in the physical world.
IBM Social Computing Guidelines: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networks, Virtual Worlds, and Social Media |
Responsible Engagement in Innovation and Dialogue |
Whether or not an IBMer chooses to create or participate in a blog, wiki, online social network, or any other form of online publishing or discussion is his or her own decision. However, emerging 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. |
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 and learning—between IBM and its clients and among the many constituents of our emerging business and societal ecosystem. The rapidly growing phenomenon of user-generated web content—blogging, social web applications, and networking—are emerging important arenas for that kind of engagement and learning. |
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. As our business activities increasingly focus on the provision of transformational insight and high-value innovation—whether to business clients or those in the public, educational, or health sectors—it becomes increasingly important for IBM and IBMers to share with the world the exciting things we’re learning and doing and to learn from others. |
In 1997, IBM recommended that its employees get out onto the Internet—at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access. In 2005, 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 space of relationship, learning, and collaboration. |
Source: Excerpted from the introduction to IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines; for full guidelines, see www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html. |
In addition to describing the expectations for associates’ behavior in online social media communities and the expectations and 10 principles for online spokespeople, Coke’s Online Social Media Principles also describe five core values for engaging in online social media communities:
Transparency in every social media engagement
Protection of consumers’ privacy
Respect of copyrights, trademarks, rights, and other third-party rights, including user-generated content
Responsibility in the use of technology
Utilization of best practices and compliance with regulations to ensure the principles reflect appropriate standards of behavior
For more details on Coke’s social media principles and those of the other organizations presented here, visit:
Coke’s Online Social Media Principles: www.thecoca-colacompany.com/socialmedia/
Converseon: SocialMediaGovernance.com
IBM Social Computing Guidelines: www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
Nordstrom Social Networking Guidelines: about.nordstrom.com/help/our-policies/social-media -guidelines.asp