The new world of social networking and electronic communications opens all sorts of questions about etiquette, behavior, and life style. In "Available All the Time: Etiquette for the Social Networking Age," Wharton Professor Nancy Rothbard calls it a "double-edged sword."
For example, she says, a Blackberry® can allow parents to attend their children’s soccer games while remaining in contact with colleagues at the office in case an emergency comes up. But she adds, “You have your Blackberry at your kid’s soccer game. That’s a line you may not want to cross.”
In today’s Advisor, we continue the policy recommendations for social networking. (The policy sample comes from a set of such policies on HR.BLR.com®.) This sample policy tries to walk the line between allowing employees freedom to express themselves, and protecting company interests.
(Go here for the first section of the sample policy.)
New ideas. Please remember that new ideas related to work or the company’s business belong to the company. Do not post them on a social media site without the company’s permission.
Links. Employees may provide a link from a social media site to the company’s website during employment (subject to discontinuance at the company’s sole discretion). Employees should contact the Web Design to obtain the graphic for links to the company’s site and to register the site with the company.
Trademarks and copyrights. Do not use the company’s or others’ trademarks on a social media site or reproduce the company’s or others’ material without first obtaining permission.
Avoid statements about the company’s future. Because the company is publicly held, writing about projected growth, sales and profits, future products or services, marketing plans, or the stock price may violate Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules or other applicable laws.
Legal. Employees are expected to comply with all applicable laws, e.g., copyright, trademark, harassment, etc.
Company restrictions. Because the company is publicly held, it may require that employees temporarily confine social media commentary to topics unrelated to the company or that employees temporarily suspend such activity to ensure compliance with the SEC’s regulations or other laws.
The company may also require employees to delete references to it on a website or web log and to stop identifying themselves as an employee of the company.
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Looks count. Ask Web Design group to review the look and feel of your website or blog and take their advice on how to improve it. Web logs should comply with the guidelines for access by persons with disabilities.
Discipline. Violations of this policy may result in discipline up to and including the immediate termination of employment.
Don’t forget to publicize your policy once you have finalized it.
So that helps take care of your social media policy. What about the, what, 100 other policies you need to write or update? COBRA changes? FMLA intermittent leave? ADA accommodation?
You need a go-to resource, and our editors recommend the “everything HR in one website,” HR.BLR.com. As an example of what you will find, here are some policy recommendations concerning e-mail, excerpted from a sample policy on the website:
- Privacy. The director of information services can override any individual password and thus has access to all electronic mail messages in order to ensure compliance with company policy. This means that employees do not have an expectation of privacy in their company e-mail or any other information stored or accessed on company computers.
- E-mail review. All e-mail is subject to review by management. Your use of the e-mail system grants consent to the review of any of the messages to or from you in the system, in printed form or in any other medium.
- Solicitation. In line with our general nonsolicitation policy, e-mail shall not be used to solicit for outside business ventures, personal parties, social meetings, charities, membership in any organization, political causes, religious causes, or other matters not connected to the company’s business.
We should point out that this is just one of hundreds of sample policies on the site. (You’ll also find analysis of laws and issues, job descriptions, and complete training materials for hundreds of HR topics.)
Find out what everyone is talking about. Take a no-cost look at HR.BLR.com and get a complimentary gift.
You can examine the entire HR.BLR.com program free of any cost or commitment. It’s quite remarkable—30 years of accumulated HR knowledge, tools, and skills gathered in one place, and accessible at the click of a mouse.
What’s more, we’ll supply a free downloadable copy of our special report, Critical HR Recordkeeping—From Hiring to Termination, just for looking at HR.BLR.com. If you’d like to try it at absolutely no cost or obligation to continue (and get the special report, no matter what you decide), go here.
All the best holiday wishes from the Daily Advisor staff!
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