Let your people go: the great social media in the workplace debate
May 20, 2009 6:53 PM
EMPLOYEE: (indignantly) I am an individual; let me speak for myself!
EMPLOYER: (blusteringly) I pay your wages! I make the rules!
It's a funny situation. According to the third annual Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace survey, 60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say that employers have no business monitoring their online activity.
Fascinating research, but I think we might be overlooking something here...
Clearly there is a disconnect between the privacy employees think they should have and the control employers think they should retain - and until these two sides share a common understanding of what social networking technologies can do for (and against) a company, neither party is going to get the most out of it.
Haven't we been here before?
But, hang on a second. Is this really so complicated? Is this a new social media story, or an age-old human behaviour story? Try replacing the word "social media" with "telephone", and you have a debate that probably raged in the mid-60s. Most executives say they should be able to listen in to employees' phone calls; employees say that's not right.
And you know what? I'll bet they reach the same conclusion in the end. Management doesn't have time to monitor every social media interaction, every Tweet and every Facebook comment, even if it did have the audacity to try. (And of course, no company wants a reputation for this kind of Big Brother behaviour.) Employees, in turn, know that they can't just say just anything to anyone.
If the employees adapt, the employer survives...
And you know what? I'll bet they reach the same conclusion in the end. Management doesn't have time to monitor every social media interaction, every Tweet and every Facebook comment, even if it did have the audacity to try. (And of course, no company wants a reputation for this kind of Big Brother behaviour.) Employees, in turn, know that they can't just say just anything to anyone.
If the employees adapt, the employer survives...
True, social media is a far more pervasive medium than a one-to-one phone call, but people are pretty adaptable. Indeed, the survey shows that people already know they have to be careful about what they say: 74% of respondents acknowledged that social media makes it easier to damage a company's reputation. And if they don't understand that it's not OK to distribute obscene or confidential information, they soon will. There will be a few more horror stories (Domino's Pizza springs to mind, but then every year there is a high-profile case of people being fired for forwarding offensive emails) and pretty soon we will wonder why we ever had the debate.
But there is another important point here - which employers will be the first to wake up and smell the coffee? If we assume (and I can't see why not) that social media will be tools eventually used by everyone, at work and at play, the only question is when do you do it?
Now: As long as you educate your people well, and manage (as opposed to censor) the use of social media, you will have a temporary advantage over your competitors. But, until the professional use of social media is more widely understood, there is still scope for companies to get it badly wrong.
Later: You will miss out on the competitive advantage you might have gained. But then it was always the pioneers who ended up with an arrow in their backs.
As always, it's down to you, but if you believe you have good people working for you, why not show a little faith? Put your trust in them and, while everyone else is arguing about censorship, you can start getting closer to your customers.
How do they do it at your business? Is it working? Do tell...
But there is another important point here - which employers will be the first to wake up and smell the coffee? If we assume (and I can't see why not) that social media will be tools eventually used by everyone, at work and at play, the only question is when do you do it?
Now: As long as you educate your people well, and manage (as opposed to censor) the use of social media, you will have a temporary advantage over your competitors. But, until the professional use of social media is more widely understood, there is still scope for companies to get it badly wrong.
Later: You will miss out on the competitive advantage you might have gained. But then it was always the pioneers who ended up with an arrow in their backs.
As always, it's down to you, but if you believe you have good people working for you, why not show a little faith? Put your trust in them and, while everyone else is arguing about censorship, you can start getting closer to your customers.
How do they do it at your business? Is it working? Do tell...
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