Is Your Social Media Policy True to Your Values?

What do you do when executives—including your lawyers—violate your social media policy?

Go back to the drawing board. And do more than rewrite or edit.

Take a step back to evaluate how well your social media policy aligns with your corporate values and ethics. Social media policies have more in common with values and ethics and other matters related to corporate reputation than with electronic media and other communication channels.

So reframe the concerns and questions. You want to protect your corporate reputation. You don’t want to worry about whether employees should or should not talk about the company on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums and anything else. Nor do you want to wring your hands about if you let them go on the sites, how you’ll judge whether they’ll write interesting posts.

Forget about it. You can’t control it. It’s a waste of time for you and your leaders.

Believe me, I know. Over the past few weeks, a couple of my clients have discovered some executives “gone wild” with social media—even without any heavy-duty policing on the company’s part.

The first reaction of these keepers of the social media policies? Tighten the policies to discourage executives and others from expressing their opinion on social media sites. Then throw the bums out of the organization.

Yeah, right…How realistic is that? Would you really fire everyone whom you caught mentioning the company name in a Facebook entry? What if they were complimenting their employer about what a great place it was to work? Or, bragging that their employer was named one of the most ethical companies to work?

(When the General Counsel realized that one of his staff members and several of his fellow executive committee members would be thrown out, the top lawyer reluctantly changed his mind. Others, including me, were delighted that employees were shouting out such great affirmations about the company to their peers inside and outside the organization. Talk about powerful–and free-PR!)

Rather than rule social media with an iron fist, you need to encourage everyone to do the right thing to protect the company’s reputation. In other words, the policy needs to reflect the organization’s particular values. With technology changing so quickly, you’ll get better traction if you ask people to be true to the company values rather than comply with rules that may be outdated before you release them. (And considering that some companies are taking more than six months to develop their social media policy, some technologies could be defunct by the time they release their policy.)

By the way, if you don’t have a social media policy, you should. For examples of more than 100 policies, check out http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php.

Also, based on your company values and your business, you may want to consider sharing your policy with an additional audience—job candidates. They may appreciate some guidance about the norms for your organization, especially since they’re probably just being exposed to your company values. For example, they may not yet know the level of discreteness you practice. Or, who are the preferred spokespeople for announcing new hires.

You don’t want a new hire to spontaneously combust before he or she even has a chance to start. Or then again, you might, depending on the judgment and values of the individual, as this person who showed how to tweet your way out of a job.

How well does your social media policy reflect your corporate values?

Liz Guthridge is a consultant, author, and trainer specializing in strategic change communications. Department leaders of Fortune 1000 companies hire Liz and her firm Connect Consulting Group LLC when they need their people—who are confused, angry or in denial—to adopt complex new initiatives so they can quickly change the way they work. For more information, contact Liz, liz.guthridge@connectconsultinggroup.com or 510-527-1213. Follow Liz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lizguthridge.