How Well Are You Managing Your Social Media Risks?

Social Media Risk? Do a quick survey with your work colleagues and count the number of people that do not use at least one social media platform. We’re guessing the number will be close to zero, although the usual statistic that is thrown about is 1 out of 5.

When you next go to research a topic, buy a product, or engage a service provider, we’re betting your fingers will hit a keyboard and your answers will be delivered online.  (Side Issue: Why do they keep delivering the Yellow Pages to people’s houses?)

Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress, Youtube, Twitter are just the tip of the iceberg.  There are literally thousands of social media platforms with more coming online every day. All of these platforms produce masses of content that is then picked up by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing which in turn point people back to your organisation. This can either be a very good thing, or a very bad thing, depending on what is being said about you.

So where is the Social Media Risk coming from?  From multiple directions actually!   Here’s 6 Social Media Risks for you to think about:

• Excessive use of social media during work hours is reducing productivity and creating conflicts.

• The risk of staff members publishing inappropriate content on their personal sites which can be linked back to their workplace as the boundaries between our work and personal lives continue to blur.

• Missed opportunities as organisations fail to get on board the content publishing revolution for fear of negative exposure.

• Employers facing discrimination claims and privacy information requests as a result of using irrelevant information gained from social media sites during the recruitment process.

• Negative comments posted online by one employee, out of work hours, triggering claims of bullying and harassment by other employees.

• Client complaints going viral (refer to our recent blog Why You Should Be Encouraging Your Clients to Complain About You! for more on this).

We could go on, however we figure you get the picture. Social media is here to stay, so organisations that fail to address their social media risks face having their competitive advantages slowly eroded, or worse, getting side-swiped by a major negative impact event that is picked up by social media networks.

“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”

“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of Civilization up until 2003”

- Eric Schmidt Former CEO Google

So how well are you managing your social media risks?  Have you got a well thought out social media policy in place? Is it a part of an integrated human resources program? Do you know your obligations with respect to privacy laws and management of employee information? What are the key social media Do’s and Don’ts? Do you have harassment, anti-discrimination and bullying policies in place that cover inappropriate online conduct by your staff?

We will be posting a series of blogs over the next few weeks expanding on these questions. As always, we would love to hear from you with comments, questions and experiences. In addition, you may wish to sign up for our upcoming webinar Social Media in the Workplace – Do’s, Don’ts.  What you need to know!

How Can CompliSpace Help? 

CompliSpace delivers a series of enhanced social media policies and online training courses as part of our comprehensive suite of online human resources programs, policies and procedures.  These are not template documents but rather policies and procedures that are specifically designed to be tailored to the needs of your organisation and integrated with other online content modules. For more information please visit www.complispace.com.au or contact us on +61 2 9299 6105 or contactus@complispace.com.au