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Print Edition StoriesThursday, July 2, 2009
How We See It
Social media brings new corporate rules
By Mass High Tech staff
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Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging — the land of social media can seem daunting to corporate executives, wrangling their part of the business into submission. These Internet-based ways of connecting with others has thrown chaos into corporate cultures that, until now, had felt confident they had their communications, not to mention their trade secrets, under control.
But social media is no longer an outside force used solely by employees for their personal lives. It has become part of business, and yes, your employees are already there — whether you know it or not. The largest demographic segment for Twitter, for example, is the 35-to-44-year-old. And Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is also the 35-and-older category, according to reports. So to consider social media as something that your employees aren’t engaged in — and therefore, something not affecting your business daily — is to bury your head in the sand.
More and more companies are now creating guidelines for social media use by their workers. And that’s OK: After all, most companies already have policies in place governing what employees can or can’t say over the corporate phone lines, by e-mail and even on old-fashioned letterhead. If not, they should.
When it comes to regulating employee use of social media, the rules by and large should be no different than any other media. However, social media is a two-way street, which brings some new issues that weren’t a problem with the phone. For example, if you use Facebook, say, to do pre-screening of potential job candidates, you may find yourself in possession of information that you are legally bound not to have, such as marital status or religion.
Social media is still evolving, and the corporate response to it needs to evolve as well. But throwing up roadblocks and hindering progress in a fast-changing world of communications is not the right strategy. Starting with the rules governing corporate communications using old media isn’t a bad way to start.
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