Employee Behaviour And The Social Web

// March 1st, 2010 // Internal Communications

Last week, I spoke at Media140 about employee behaviour on social media. There’s been some great feedback from people about how we’ve reached the point we have reached as a business, and about whether the online conduct policy represents an effort to control staff behaviour.  I thought, in the interests of providing a bit more information, I’d expand on the topic (for those who were there) or give an overview on how I think this works (for those who weren’t).

The behaviour of employees, unchecked and unmonitored, can be tremendously damaging to a brand. An employee whose identity, online or off, is linked to a brand, can through their behaviour bring the brand into disrepute, lose clients for the business, land clients in actual legal trouble and have a significant impact on the ability of the business to attract talent and clients.

I’m not suggesting every employee will. Nearly every employee will behave in a manner consistent with your corporate values. Hopefully, you hired them because they believe in the same things your company does anyway. However, if ‘common sense’ was as common as the title suggests, we wouldn’t need anything like these policies. And because it isn’t, we need to be prepared.

There are two distinct groups of people – those who believe that adults, unchecked and self-monitoring, will always act like mature, responsible people who avoid public outbursts and irrational arguments, and those that have spent a bit of time on the internet. Let’s face it – employees are just people, and people are capable of behaving in ways we can never predict, both online and off.

So our solution is this. On one hand, you build a policy. A legal framework that identifies which behaviours are outside the company’s tolerance for appropriate behaviour as linked with the brand. This is no different to a professional conduct policy, which most businesses have in one form or another. It spells out what is acceptable behaviour, and what is not. Hopefully, you never have to use that. And it doesn’t have to be extreme – Nick Hodge tells us that Microsoft’s is a list of bullet points. It needs to be the company’s back-stop against behaviour which is detrimental.

On the flip side of that, you educate staff. You explain to staff that there is a policy, which they should read, about what’s good behaviour online. As a business, you offer to train them in creating successful and lucrative social presences. You invite them to become advocates and spokespeople for the brand on company-sponsored forums. You give staff the benefit of the doubt, and some tools to help them steer clear of potential mess.

This is not control. This is risk management. You don’t assume that people driving your company cars have current licences – you check that they know what they’re doing before they take a fleet car out for a spin. Control is an active interest and ongoing program of involvement. Management is a system which involves monitoring, and adjustment where necessary of existing processes. Particularly with an audience to whom this technology is new, difficult to get used to, and requires the use of skills that haven’t been developed previously. (In our case, additional care has to be taken, because our employee base is highly technical. They like tolerances and technical limits. You can’t speak in generalities to engineers – the laws must be rigid.)

So at this point, here’s the situation. Any employee is free to exist on any social network they choose. They are free to network with anyone they like. They are free to post pictures, upload videos, chat with people and undertake any social networking activities which fall within our Use of IT Equipment policy. The only codicil is that if they are going to wilfully engage in (or have been found to engage in) behaviours which contravene the conduct policy, they remove their association with the business from their active profile.  This is a choice to honour a behavioural code which aligns with our values, or to ignore that code.

Essentially, the company is saying “If you’re going to act this way, we don’t want to be associated with you.” The same as the company would if an employee ran around the city in corporate livery attacking foreigners or molesting girls in nightclubs. Engaging in that behaviour is the responsibility of the individual. The brand needs to stand up for the values which support it, and behaviours which fall outside this should be separated from the brand. (There is an argument that an employee who plans to engage in these behaviours is probably not someone you want to employ anyway, but we’ll save that one.)

This is not control. We are not dictating your behaviour. We are saying that you, as a professional who understands the consequences, needs to act in a manner which supports the public values of our brand. If you choose not to, your association with the brand must cease – you are damaging an asset. We are saying that you have a choice. And if you choose to behave that way while representing the brand, there will be consequences. As I said earlier, most of the time, this isn’t even an issue. Depending on your brand values, most employees already adhere to an unofficial code of conduct – it’s a community-set standard of behaviour.

And yes – people will always argue that you aren’t an employee 24/7. No, you aren’t. However, the global web makes no distinction. It doesn’t care when you logged off and went from being an employee to a private citizen. It sees your employer name in your profile, and you represent that employer – in spirit, at the very least.

I’d love to hear more about what other organisations are doing in this space. If you know of any great case studies, please comment, or get in touch!