Social media is rapidly catching up with email as a way for people to communicate. Many businesses are seeking to use social networks as a tool to connect with customers in new and meaningful ways, building relationships and making sales in the process.

However, six in ten British adults say they own at least one personal social media account. The always-on, always-available nature of social networking provides new challenges for your HR department.

The Good

As well as maintaining an “official” Facebook page or Twitter feed, some companies actively encourage their staff to use their own accounts as a way for customers to communicate directly with experts and resolve issues quickly. These personal accounts help your company put faces to names, and encourage staff to become brand advocates, freely sharing their knowledge and experience.

Using this approach, a company fosters a more social image, making would-be customers feel more at ease when communicating with your organisation. Few forward-thinking businesses would be averse to their staff liaising with customers to discuss your products and services positively in this way, providing it was done through official channels on which customer communications can be recorded and monitored.

The Bad

Occasionally, social media lands a brand in trouble due to carelessness on the part of the person responsible for publishing content. Even massive corporations with highly trained marketing experts can send the wrong message at the wrong time.

Microsoft found itself suffering a major backlash after sending a tweet suggesting that the best way to remember Amy Winehouse was by buying her music from their online store. Unfortunately the tweet was sent just hours after Winehouse’s death, sparking accusations of crude profiteering.

Sending tweets that can be misinterpreted in this way is actually extremely common, particularly with some social media management platforms allowing post scheduling, which means that a pre-scheduled tweet could end up being sent out at an embarrassingly inopportune moment. The problem is that misjudged social media messages are widely circulated and ridiculed, damaging your brand in the process.

The Ugly

The very worst examples of social media failures involve direct abuse or harassment of another person. Normally official company feeds are able to escape such controversy, but some staff are prone to using their own accounts to exhibit such behaviour.

A Freedom of Information request in Wales found that local councils were struggling to deal with social media abuses by their employees. Powys, for instance, issued one member of staff with a final written warning after they were found guilty of “bringing the Council into possible disrepute by posting inappropriate comments”.

Several of the other Welsh councils surveyed reported similar issues with staff criticising their employers publicly on social media sites. HR experts suggest that the experiences of the councils are being repeated in other organisations, as disgruntled employees voice their grievances online.

Some suggested solutions

Where your staff are using social media responsibly, your business has little to fear. However, your HR team should prepare for mistakes and abuses in advance, to help minimise the fall-out and its effect on your company.

Social Media Policies and Contract Clauses

Whether new staff are involved with your official social media presence or not, a clause regarding acceptable use of social media should be included in every contract of employment. You should also consider amending your Internet Acceptable Use Policy to include social media.

By providing a document to staff to read, sign and return, they are then fully informed about what is acceptable, and the penalties they may incur should they breach the policy. As with any policy sent out to staff, your HR system needs to be able to record receipt and agreement in the event of an employment or disciplinary dispute.

Training and Awareness

For staff who will be representing your company on social media, it is essential that they understand how you wish to appear. This means training employees in what they can and should say, along with topics and language that should be avoided.

As topics begin to trend on Twitter, for instance, it is perfectly legitimate to try and publicise related aspects of your business. Staff should be trained to exercise caution and tact before tweeting to avoid the appearance of crass opportunism, as in the Microsoft example. Your team should also undertake training to address social media failures in advance so that should something go wrong, you can begin working to rectify the issue immediately.

You should also consider offering all staff compulsory awareness training to help them understand the impact of social media usage outside work, particularly when they are discussing your company. Such sessions should cover topics such as:

• A restatement of the company social media policy.
• A discussion of how social media usage outside work hours has an impact on their job and the company.
• Warnings about the persistence of social media posts (once published they are permanent, even if deleted)
• A look at how abusing social media, or over-sharing personal details, could cause future employment issues.

Again, you should ensure your HR system can record details of attendance, and also flag up employees who may have missed the course. You can then arrange additional courses to guarantee your entire team has a recognised level of social media awareness.

Access Restrictions

Where your company deems social media access too risky, or a waste of employee time, you may choose to block access to these sites from company computers. Your IT team or service provider will be able to advise further on how this prevention can be applied.

You should bear in mind that staff will still be able to access social media via apps on their personal smartphones and tablets, which bypass your company network restrictions. In this situation, your company may choose to actively monitor staff profiles to identify updates posted during office hours and discipline staff who are in breach of your restrictions.

Usage Monitoring and Social Tracking

Where your business decides that social media usage is acceptable during work hours, your IT team should be enlisted to monitor and report on it. Using standard network tools, you can see which of your staff is accessing social media, and how long they spend doing it. This should give some insight into whether they are using social media productively, or simply wasting company time and resources.

You should also seriously consider investing in a social monitoring tool or service to see what is being said about your company, and by whom. Normally these tools, such as Social Mention, are used to track customer sentiment and gain insights into how your products and services are regarded. However, the same tools can also be used to identify instances in which your staff are publicly criticising the company or otherwise breaching your policy.

Record Breaches

In the same way that your marketing department needs to record instances of customer interactions on social media, your HR department should also be logging staff communications, particularly those that may be questionable in topic or tone. Ideally, your HR system should allow you to record breaches of policy, details of warning letters and discussions, and any other disciplinary activities.

Social – it isn’t all bad

Social media is redefining business communications by making people easier to reach any time, any place. Used wisely, and backed by well-trained staff, the potential benefits of social media for your business are undeniable. By giving careful thought to how social networking is used, and by preparing staff in advance, your company stands a good chance of avoiding high profile gaffes.

 

Image credit:  Facebook screenshot by Robert S. Donovan on Flickr