Is Social Networking putting you or your organisations reputation at risk?

“You will never guess what I was working on today....”

If this was a status update by one of your employees on any social networking site, followed by a detailed account of exactly what they had been doing, shared with the world, how much damage could this cause?

Do you know what your employees are saying about your organisation?

People talk, its human nature. I was witness to this last week on a very busy train back from London. I was party to the first throws of young love through a conversation with the gentleman next to me and his new love. Believe me I could hear both sides of the conversation, which made it at least a little more interesting! As a not so regular commuter I had thought this was either poor train etiquette or very confident on his part. However the part of conversation that made me smile was when, after a long discussion about his new job that week, he used the phrase, “you won’t believe what I am working on, it’s all confidential and I have signed some agreement” This raised a smile from myself and several around me who were clearly as enraptured as I on a dull journey, but believe me when I tell you the “Company name” had been mentioned already to most of the carriage listening and the company were saved only by the arrival of his stop from the reveal of exactly what he had been working on. Who knows where the pillow talk would have ended but it’s clearly not just MPs and laptops revealing all on a train.

Not an example of social networking, I grant you, but a clear example of being entirely unaware of who is listening or indeed reading and what is being inadvertently revealed.

I have heard all the standard answers with regard to employees being reprimanded for poor use of social networks. “It’s my personal page I can do what I like” “It’s nothing to do with work” “Only my friends can see it” “I didn’t mention the Company name so it doesn’t link back to the company” etc etc.

But consider this scenario. Employee A works for a building company on a rather large and expensive house extension. Said employee feels he wants to share his day with his “friends” talking about the house and all its trimming, its cinema TV etc. Of course this is entirely fine because he doesn’t say where he works. Unless, of course, you check his information which states his employer. But only his friends are reading this. Unless, of course, the friends of those friends, read and comment and the friends of those friends read and comment. Is the employee at risk from the customer discovering they have been public knowledge? Not great for reputation.

We all know the Social networking funnies. The “sick” employee tagging himself on the beach on a Friday afternoon. The status updates of I have a new job, just didn’t think to tell the current employer first before the announcement.

However a less visible risk exists to your organisation, both its reputation and protecting the welfare of your employees and this lies in what employees are saying. Whether it be twitter, facebook, linked in, google plus, the list goes on, the message is the same. Ensure that you make clear rules on what employees are saying, permitted to say and the consequences if this is breached. This should all be captured in a written policy.

Bullying through schools has increased via the use of social networking and its 24 7 nature and the same is true of the work place. If an employee uses language that constitutes harassment or bullying about a colleague you have a duty of care to manage this. The easiest way to manage this is to refer back to your rules and policy which sets out your expectations.

A good policy should cover exactly what is permitted in terms of us, as well as spelling out what specifically is incorrect use and the consequences of this.

If you want to reduce risk make sure you put your rules in place as trying to manage misuse without having made this clear, can be very difficult.