Twitter, Facebook and MySpace: Employee Social Networking on Company Time

By Dr. Tamara Johnson, Ph.D.

Technological advances are rapidly changing the way people communicate with each other and the rest of the world. Instant messaging, texting, and sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter all provide the opportunity to rapidly interact with a huge universe of new people.

While most employees are not being paid to give in to these technological temptations during working hours, a number of major corporations such as Comcast, Bank of America, UPS, Wachovia, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and online retailer Zappos, all have official corporate Twitter accounts to provide marketing, customer service, or both.

IBM Corp. uses Twitter to encourage research scientists to communicate with each other, and Silicon Valley tech giant Yahoo even has 25 to 30 employees who are designated to act as the company’s official Twitter representatives; they’re paid to spread the word about new Yahoo products and services.

Because these social network sites are available 24/7, another area of concern is what your employees may post or blog about the company, your trade secrets, their co-workers or your customers online after hours.

Often, employees consider off duty activities strictly their own business so long as their actions do not interfere with the rights of others. In an employment context, employees are free to do what they will with their own free time, as long as what they do does not adversely affect their employer, co-workers, or the employer’s clients, customers, patients, vendors, or other partners with which the company does business.

And, while your employees might believe that they’re posting about mundane company events, keep in mind that competitors may be out there monitoring their every word. In many ways, these social networks are competitive-intelligence dream tools.

No matter where your company falls in this brave new world of technology, as in any other area where it’s important to establish reasonable standards of workplace behavior, communicating your expectations to your employees is critical.

Employers have covered similar ground before, first with personal phone use at work, then with e-mail, then with the Web. In each case, as electronic communications have advanced, organizations have been forced to decide what employees may and may not do, and revise company policies accordingly. One way to do this is to implement a company policy on employees’ use of social media.

An example of a policy regarding use of social media by employees can be obtained by contacting Proverbs Consulting.

It is always best to have such a policy reviewed by an employment law attorney who can consider all of the factors and aspects of the situation and determine whether the policy meets your particular company needs.

Finally, should your company decide to adopt such a formal policy, all employees should sign four copies of the policy and be given trained on its meaning. One of the best ways to do give training that would be to perform the following steps:

1. Schedule and hold a mandatory staff meeting.

2.    Distribute an agenda listing discussion of the policy appears as an action item.
3.    Have all employees sign an attendance roster at the meeting and hand out copies of the new policy.
4.    Discuss the policy and hold a question-and-answer session.
5.    Pass out copies of an acknowledgment of receipt form that indicates that the policy was received.
6.    Instruct the employees to sign the acknowledgement form.
7.    Collect the signed forms before adjourning the meeting.

Like much of the internet, social networks are great innovations that give users the opportunity to create and communicate with whole new communities. Any policy an employer may choose to cover the use of such forums can easily be summed up in a new “Golden Rule”: your employees should be encouraged to not say anything about the company or other individuals that they would not want said about themselves.

While millions of people are having fun and even making productive use of these new technologies, it is always wise to keep in mind that technology does not absolve the users from acting responsibly, and it creates as many obligations as it does opportunities for expression.

As with every new technology, there are laws (i.e., privacy, defamation, copyright), social norms and business practices that warrant thoughtful consideration and communication with your employees. A sensible policy will go a long way toward addressing those areas before the risks outweigh the benefits to you and your employees.

Dr. Tamara Johnson, Ph.D., is the founder of Arlington, Texas based Proverbs Consulting. Proverbs Consulting offers a diversity of professional business consulting strategies to entrepreneurs, small-business owners, faith-based as well as non-profit organizations. Contact Dr. Johnson at info [at] proverbsconsulting.com or visit the Proverbs Consulting website.

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