In my frequent discussions with customers about the benefits of cloud archiving for regulatory, legal, and business reasons, I still find a large percentage that still don’t worry about archiving corporate social media content.
social media
Your organization’s social media problem can’t be cured with antibiotics
You can’t control what employees do away from work on their own time and using their own equipment but companies do have a right to control their brand and that includes how they are represented by their employees on social media sites. For that reason, every organization should develop, implement and enforce a corporate-wide social media policy for all employees (because if you don’t enforce it, then do you really have a policy?).
Gary MacFadden was kind enough to pose a great question in response to my last blog posting titled “Did you hear the one about the Attorney who thought social media was a dating website for singles over 40?”. Gary pointed out that it would be helpful if I could give examples of a corporate social media policy (what it involved) and what the employee education process would be to make employees aware of the policy. With that in mind, here are some aspects of a corporate social media policy:
- A policy author with contact information in case employees have questions
- An effective date
- A definition of what social media is
- A description as to why this policy is being developed (for legal defense, brand protection etc)
- A description of what social media sites the company officially participates in
- A listing of those employees approved to participate on those sites
- The fact that any and all approved social media participations will be done only from corporate infrastructure (this is to protect approved employees from discovery of their personal computers)
- A description of topics approved to be used
- A description of those topics not approved to be used
- A description of any approval authority process
- A description of what will happen to the employee if they don’t follow the approved process
- A direct statement that unapproved employees that make derogatory remarks about the organization, publish identifying information about clients, employees, or organization financials, talk about organization business or strategy etc. in any social media venue will be punished in the following manner…
- A description of how these policies will be audited and enforced
Once the policy is developed, it needs to be communicated to all employees and updated by legal representative on an annual basis. This education process could include steps like:
- A regularly updated company intranet site explaining the policy.
- A description and discussion of the policy in new employee orientation activities.
- A printed description of the policy which the employee signs and returns to the organization.
- An annual revisiting of the policy in department meetings.
- The publishing of an organization “hot line” to your corporate legal department for real-time questions.
On a related topic, for legal reasons you should be archiving all approved social media participations much like many companies now archive their email and instant message content.
This practice will seem rather draconian to many employees but in reality the organization needs to protect the brand and always have a proactive strategy for potential litigation.
A sampling of various organizations social media policies can be found here. I was particularly impressed withDell’s.
Who owns an employee’s social media account?
The New York Times published a story on December 25th of this year titled: “A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court” raising questions around the ownership of a Twitter account that was opened by an individual who included the name of the company he was working for in his account name and posted to the Twitter account during business hours. The NYTimes story posed the question: Can a company cash in on and claim ownership of an employee’s social media account, and if so, what does that mean for workers who are increasingly posting to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus during work hours?
The story revolves around a lawsuit filed in July of 2011 by the company Phonedog.com. The defendant, Mr. Kravitz, a writer, began posting to his Twitter account under the name “Phonedog_Noah” and over time collected 17,000 followers. In October 2010, Mr. Kravitz quit his job at Phonedog.com telling him that he could keep his Twitter account in exchange for tweeting on their behalf occasionally and Mr. Kravitz agreed.
Mr. Kravitz changed the name of the account to “NoahKravitz” keeping all the followers to the original account and began posting.
The question the New York Times posed is an interesting one but I think another question that should be asked is; what should an employee do to ensure there is no legal claim by their employer to “their” social media presence?
First, the employee should inquire within their employer as to any social media policies that exist. Most of the employer social media policies I have seen go to great pains describing what employees can and can’t post about the company and its business to social media sites. Corporate content such as upcoming product releases, sales data, and company rumors are the most popular types of restricted content highlighted. Based on this case, additional policy elements should include not including the organization’s name in the employee’s social media handle as well as not accessing or interacting with the employee’s social media accounts during work hours and from infrastructure owned by the organization.
If the organization doesn’t have a published social media use policy, then the employee should follow common sense and:
- Not post about your employers business especially confidential content
- Not post organization or staff rumors
- Never include the organization’s name in the social media handle (remember, corporate brands are valuable and most companies will aggressively defend them
- And never access social media accounts while on “company time” and from company infrastructure
Like the case mention above, if the organization asks its employees to post comments about the organization, employees should get the request in writing first acknowledging the organization will not claim ownership of the employee’s social media account is the employee does what is requested and also describing the types of comments the organization would like the employee to post. The employee will then have to decide if they want to use their social media account for organization business.
The same holds true for creating a social media account which includes the organization’s name as in the case mentioned above: Phonedog_Noah. In many cases creating a social media account with the employers name may be considered part of the employment agreement and could be considered an organization’s asset. The employee should always ask if that is the case and if the employer doesn’t claim ownership at the start, the employee should get a statement in writing stating the employer has no claims on the social media account.
A social media presence has become an integral part of organization marketing and all parties involved need to understand up front what the expectations are and who owns the asset.
Information Governance-101 