Doug: The first step in putting together a social media policy is to figure out what you want your company and its employees to do with social media. I think of a traffic light as a good analogy.
Doug: You want a red light, trying to block and deter its use Or a green light, to encourage its responsible use Or a yellow light, taking a somewhat neutral stance. Your company is not sure whether it wants to actively engage but thinks blocking is also not the right answer. Since there are three of us on the panel,
Doug: We thought we would each take one of these positions in our discussion of developing your company’s corporate policy for social media. Let’s take a minute and have each of my fellow panelists introduce themselves
The first issue is do you need even need a policy? Or can it be something simple like “Don’t be stupid”?
Should your policy merely be blocking access to these sites
A few states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York and North Dakota, protect employees from adverse employment action based on their lawful off-duty activities, which generally would encompass blogging.
Don’t employees have a first amendment right to say what they want?
Should you identify the company you work for? Is this rule different for different social media sites? LinkedIn, Facebook, Blog. .
Should you allow employees to use the company name in the URL or name of the blog or social media account Or put a company logo on their blog page?
Aren’t these just productivity drains and what can you do to limit the potential loss of productivity?
Should you publish online recommendations about employees?
Should you allow employees to criticize the company?
Should you monitor your employees’ use of social media? What do you do if they break the policy?
How do you start drafting a policy? What are some starting point?