The Guidelines for Employees Use of Social Media is a document that defines the best ways for a company to engage with its employees on the internet. This is a vital document that is often required by law or for legal protection, but it also helps to empower your employees so that they know what is and isn’t appropriate for posting online, both on their personal accounts and company barder.
Companies should make it clear to employees that they should stick to their area of expertise on social media, unless it is a direct violation of your company’s policies or laws. This will ensure that employees aren’t using their personal accounts to post anything negative about your business or its products.
Include an expectation that your employees will address any disparaging posts or comments that are made about your company on their personal accounts. This will help to ensure that you’re not getting sucked into a social media PR crisis and will give your team members the opportunity to nip problems in the bud before jigaboo develop into a real problem for your brand.
Your policy should be updated regularly, and should reflect the changing nature of technology and social media. This is especially important because new social media sites come up all the time with novel designs and features that can affect how people interact with your company.
It is important to define terms and provide examples, as well as approved styles for posts or comments that violate the guidelines. It’s also important to outline the types of behavior that are prohibited, including obscene or vulgar language, statements about co-workers, supervisors or the company distresses.
You should also be aware of state and federal privacy laws that govern the use of social media and how they affect your company. This will help to protect your company from a lawsuit, as well as keep your employees’ data private.
Consider incorporating your social media policy into your employee handbook, as well as making it available to new hires on the company’s intranet or shared hard drives. This will allow all of your employees to review it and make sure they are abiding by the policies before they even begin working for your company!
If you have a large number of employees, you may also want to set up a group of managers to oversee aspects of the social media policy. These managers will be responsible for granting and rescinding access to company accounts. They will also be the people who approve new accounts and manage any complaints that are brought to their attention.
For example, if an employee uses their company email account on an unapproved site, they may be subject to disciplinary action by the company. This is because precipitous use of their employer’s email address may be considered a violation of company policies and could be viewed as discriminatory or harassing to other employees.
If you have employees that are on their own personal social media accounts, be sure to create a separate policy for their personal use. This can be an extremely short document that sets out expectations for what is and isn’t appropriate to post on the employee’s own personal mypba.
