What Should I Put in My Company’s Social Media Policy?

It seems like someone is in the news for getting into trouble on social media almost daily. Many companies have adopted social media policies as part of their employment policies to help guide their employees’ behavior and prevent embarrassing mishaps. If you are considering a social media policy, here are some things to think over and include.

Trust your employees. You wouldn’t have hired them if you didn’t think they were reasonably intelligent adults. Don’t over-do your social media policy, particularly if you go into detail about rules for external communications elsewhere. One of my favorite social media policies is Best Buy’s: short, sweet, and to the point. You don’t want to anger or alienate your employees.

FTC regulations. There are a lot of them, but the ones most relevant to social media policies have to do with privacy (don’t disclose information that doesn’t belong to you) and disclosure of relationships (do disclose a relationship when you could have something to gain from your comments).

NLRB rulings. The National Labor Relations Board has been extremely active in regulating social media policies for the past few years, all on the theory that certain provisions might discourage protected activity. Make sure your policy doesn’t run afoul of any of these rulings.

Public companies. Social media is a must for public companies these days, but public companies are subject to special rules about what they can tell people and when. Remind your employees to think about those rules when posting on social media sites. A single thoughtless comment about what an engineer is working on at work can reveal a great deal more than s/he intended.

Regulated industries. If you are in a regulated industry, social media is not exempt from the requirements for your company’s communications. Remind your employees of this fact and make sure that you have the technology in place to support any documentation requirements.

Use during working hours. Companies approach this one in many different ways. Employees can use social networking as a valuable tool for creating and maintaining working relationships; or they can dither away time watching videos of cats. There can be some overlap there, too; finding that one has a shared love of cat videos with an important customer can solidify a working relationship. You need to take a look at your own company’s culture in deciding whether to restrict use of social media during working hours and on company equipment. Some common approaches are 1) the outright ban, blocking access from work computers (though you cannot physically/technologically prevent people from using mobile devices, without blocking all mobile signals); 2) the partial ban, allowing access only to selected sites or by selected employees who use social media as part of their jobs; or 3) the “use responsibly” policy, allowing employees to choose whether and when to use social media during working hours and on work machines, within reasonable limits.

Intellectual property. One area that your average employee likely does not have to deal with extensively in the normal course of business is intellectual property. Furthermore, the ways in which photos, videos, and so on, are shared on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest has eroded the public sense of what is or is not acceptable practice under the law. Your policy may need to spell out the intellectual property practices of your organization, depending upon how and how often your employees have reason to come into contact with them.

Special concerns. You know your company. You know your industry. There are very likely one or two things that should be in your policy that are unique. You know what they are.

What does your company have in its policy? What else do you think a company should include in its policies?