Social media and the workplace hit the headlines again.

Although the big story has been Paris Brown losing her job within days  of taking up her new post, of far more concern than a 15/16 year olds misjudged comments, is the fact that the Met have revealed that they have investigated 75 police staff over misuse of social media since 2009. This has been closely followed by an incident of a police officer being disciplined for tweeting distasteful comments about Thatcher’s death this week.

It all shows how easy it is for lines to be blurred when using social media. Work and home lives are becoming far more intertwined; when and where is it OK to voice personal opinions for example? Is a personal blog different to a company blog? And what might be acceptable in one organisation may not be in another.

A large proportion of employees don’t even know their company has a policy on internet use... and often if they do know a policy exists they have never read it or don’t really understand what it means to them.

A couple of points to consider...

• Ensure your policy is specific rather than couched in general blanket terms... eg instead of asking people not to disclose confidential information, offer some examples of what confidential information might be. Do guidelines on making comments about the company or fellow employees extend to personal tweeting/blogging/facebook?
• Get teams and departments talking the policy through, so that they can clarify and discuss how it might affect their particular role
• Ensure your managers are confident in implementing the policy... if they are not sure where the lines are, they will not be able to step in and deal with any possible breach

Having a policy on social media use is only the first step; giving employees a chance to question, discuss and understand it is the far more powerful step and will minimise the sort of time consuming investigations, which the Met have had to instigate.

For more guidelines, see our other blogs on managing social media in the workplace and our workshops on managing appropriate behaviour at work

I recently attended a Linked In training course to ensure I’m making the best use of its capability.  The facilitator, Mark Williams known as Mr LinkedIn (mark@etn-training.co.uk) is one of only 3 Trainers in the world to have been previously accredited by LinkedIn and the only one from the UK.  He explained in plain language how to use (and not use) LinkedIn, the benefits, the dangers and potential of this fast-growing networking facility.

Currently there are 150+m users worldwide (c 9m in the UK) and this is increasing at approximately 1m per week (40k/month in the UK).  See  www.mrlinkedin.wordpress.com  for more breakdown on these impressive statistics.

Like many people, I have been on LinkedIn for some time now, so my main objective for attending was to ensure my profile was fit for purpose and ensure I am making the most of the opportunities! One of my primary reasons for using LinkedIn is to enable potential clients to view my profile and determine if I have the credentials to train their work force.

With more and more potential clients using Linked in as a vetting tool, this is becoming key for many people. 

10 key things I discovered;

• The importance of using key words in your headline (so people can immediately see your area of expertise as well as for optimisation purposes)
• Ensure you include vital information such as email/contact details clearly in your summary
• Ensuring recommendations are from the right people- people who can genuinely recommend you
• Look at whether you can expand your specialities (to aid optimisation again)
• Add buttons so that people can follow you and find you through other means eg  twitter
• Ensure you engage with people before you ask them to connect and personalise your invite – why should someone connect with you if they know nothing about you or how it might help them?
• Use the statistics available to see what traffic you have to your profile
• Explore other tools such as LinkedIn Signal to gather market intelligence (including outside of your network).  Look under the News tab to find this.
• Join appropriate groups to access information, current hot topics and access new contacts
• Include a suitable business-like photo (not a holiday snap!)*

*If you don’t include a photo and you ask someone to connect that you met some time ago, how will they remember who you are?

If you are on LinkedIn, you want people to find you, that’s the whole point! Investing some time making sure your profile is effective could pay dividends.

For more blogs and guidance on using social media appropriately click here 

There is currently a heated debate raging in the HR community about whether organisations should have a Social media policy. Neil Morrison Group HR director at Random house sparked the debate by insisting that using a social media policy demonstrated a lack of trust in employees. Many have responded that it is about giving people clarity rather than being patronising.

We would agree with that view. Generally people in a work environment want boundaries – they want to know what is expected of them and where the lines are. This extends to many areas of behaviour at work, not just use of social media. Having a policy provides that guidance.

One comment made was that what you call the policy doesn’t matter; you just need to be sensible. We wholeheartedly agree with being sensible – we have been advocating a common sense approach in these blogs for a while – but actually we do think the language you use and what you call the policy makes a difference

Even using the word Policy may distance the people it is meant to relate to – “Guidelines” has less of a dogmatic ring to it. If the content is written in plain language with examples that relate to day to day activities, it will sound less legalese. It’s about ensuring it does what it says on the tin. For example, if you call a policy about appropriate behaviour “Dignity at work” (which many organisations do) does that tell people it is about appropriate behaviour or suggest it is more about equal opportunities policies?

Working a great deal with organisations in this area we were interested to see what terms our clients used – so we have been asking them. We suspected that while we call support in this area Managing Appropriate Workplace Behaviour, managers would use other terms and the results have been very interesting. Many will use the words that reflect the situation as they see it eg dealing with office banter, managing difficult people, conflict in teams. That has been a very helpful insight for us in terms of marketing our support in these areas. But it also underlines that getting the language and terms right when you communicate with your audience is key.

So we don’t agree with Neil Morrison – companies should have policies, but they should think about how to word them and how to communicate them so that they are meaningful. 

Hot on the heels of our last blog looking at the perils of employees using social media comes an incident of an employee being sacked for posting defamatory comments about their employer on Facebook.

An employee of an Apple store had written derogatory comments about Apple on his Facebook page, which were then passed to his boss by a Facebook “friend” and co worker.

He was dismissed for gross misconduct.

He bought a claim of unfair dismissal, which failed because Apple had such clear policies around the use of social media. As brand and image is so central to Apple’s success, they particularly made it clear that any derogatory remarks that damaged the brand would not be tolerated.

What Apple also did was to make sure that their policies weren’t just handed out in a document, but were also made part of the induction programme. This crystal clear communication ensured Apple could defend and protect their commercial reputation in this situation.

Once again, the lessons are

• have a clear social media policy (see our last blog for some guidance as to what to include)
• communicate it to your employees and make sure they understand it
• make sure managers are confident in dealing with breaches of any policy

The latest survey by DLA Piper in People Management highlights an area that is posing a real problem for employers – the use and misuse of social networking sites.

Many employers seem confused by the boundaries they should be setting and how to deal with behaviour they deem as unacceptable

The survey highlights how torn employers are in their attitude to social networking sites. On the one hand use of these sites can offer a valuable way of promoting brand awareness and marketing the company. On the other, its use is fraught with the dangers of negative or defamatory comments being posted and the damage that can do.

But is it really that difficult?

We have been advocating a common sense approach for while now and are delighted to see that Acas takes this line in its newly published guidelines, urging employers to “draw on norms that apply in a non virtual setting.” In other words to “treat electronic behaviour as you would treat non electronic behaviour.”

The key of course is to have clear guidelines so people understand what is acceptable and what is not.
For example, it may be fine and indeed you may encourage your employees to network to fulfil business objectives, but it probably isn’t acceptable for people to load up holiday snaps on facebook in work time. 

Over a third of employers surveyed felt that they were exposed to risks posed by comments and information posted on social networking sites.  So here are some practical steps to help ensure your organisation is protected…
• have a dedicated social media policy
• communicate to everyone in the company so they understand the boundaries
• train your managers in how to deal with situations where they suspect someone has breached the policy

Our support around developing appropriate behaviour at work  will help on each of these steps.

Acas has some great guidelines on what a policy should cover, but as a brief overview consider
• The scope – what does the policy cover?
• What is acceptable and what is not
• Monitoring of employees activity on networking sites
• Consequences of breaching the policy (link to disciplinary procedures )

Don’t leave it until you have to deal with a disciplinary issue – taking preventative action could save you a lot of time and hassle.