Social Media in the Workplace
The increased popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can pose significant challenges for employers.
A survey commissioned by IT services provider Morse, polled almost 1500 workers and found that 57% of employees spent an average of 40 minutes per week on social networking sites. Morse equated this statistic to a loss of just under a full working week for each employee per year!!
Loss of productivity however is not the only problem faced by employers. During 2009 a number of national household retailers were subject to negative press and customer complaints, further to employees complaining about their employers and their customers on social networking sites. If not addressed, these incidents can cause immeasurable damage to your business’s reputation. One way of minimising the risk and negative influence of social media, is for an employer to impose a clear social media policy.
If your employees work with computers on a daily basis it is commonplace for an internet or electronic communications policy to be in place. Such a policy ordinarily gives the employer the right to monitor personal e-mails and internet use. However, many of these policies are quickly out-of-date and do not specifically cover social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Any policy should be clear and leave an employee in no doubt as to what they can and cannot say with regard to their employer and its business. Some businesses will choose not to allow employees to access these sites all together. However, this is not always practicable especially in creative industries which rely on social media as a means of marketing and communication and this will not address those who post away from the work place.
A social networking policy should encourage employees to raise any genuine complaints through the company’s grievance policy as opposed to posting potentially negative comments on, for example, Facebook. It should also remind employees of the manner in which they should treat their colleagues and identify that information which offends or degrades a colleague may be viewed as an act of bullying, harassment and/or discrimination.
The policy should leave an employee in no doubt that bringing the business’s reputation into disrepute is likely to lead to disciplinary action being taken and in serious or repeated cases, this could lead to dismissal.
If you require further information in regard to dealing with social media in the workplace, drafting a social media policy or any other matter please contact James Twine on 01752 292351.
