what are four ways to avoid unethical use of social media in the workplace?

Online social media applications are quickly gaining the mindshare of company employees and changing but as chop-chop.  With all the benefits that social media is bringing to the corporate earth, a company faces numerous risks in its use, from misuse of company resources, to conflicts of interest and disparagement of others.

Social media is a challenging topic because it crosses over and so many ideals and compliance bug.  Merely similar any other ethics and compliance topic, it tin and must exist proactively managed for a visitor to safeguard its reputation and provide its employees with the tools to manage their own personal and business concern activities.

Introduction

For many companies, social media can provide new ways of connecting with potential and current customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders.  They offer companies the opportunity to speed upward the pace of business organisation, better establish the message that a company wants to convey, strengthen a company's relationships with customers and others and farther facilitate a continuous conversation about the business organization.

But social media when not well managed opens the door to numerous risks – alienation of confidentiality, conflicts of interest, misuse of company resources, to name a few of the more than obvious ones. Since social media can touch and so many aspects of a company'due south operations, its leadership needs to address it in context to its overall business operations.  Unlike some take chances areas, it cannot exist successfully addressed largely as a stand-alone affair.

A company without an initiative to finer identify, appraise and manage its approach to social media and its various tools not only loses out on its many opportunities they offering but faces numerous risks to and improper business practices and activities that may damage the concern.  A program to harness these risks does not need to exist onerous or intrusive, simply information technology does need to exist proportional to the company'due south exposure.  Farther, a visitor should look the social media arena to continue to change both in technologies, their uses, business providers and ways social media impacts the business organisation landscape.

The Social Media Landscape

Visitor management may exist familiar with the most prevalent social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), simply c hances are that a visitor'south younger employees are actively using platforms that are far less well known or understood (TikTok, Reddit and more). Obviously smartphones and diverse forms of wearable engineering (Apple watches, etc.) are ubiquitous in the workplace, offer employees' easy access to the Internet — creating more difficulty for a company to monitor workplace use.

Read: Can An Employee Be Fired for Sharing a Questionable Social Media Post?

Companies are nonetheless playing take hold of-upward when information technology comes to legal and regulatory standards that employ to social media. Currently, a number of U.S. laws and regulations are being applied to the media'due south applications. Regulation FD responds to the communication of company financial or other fundamental operational information outside of the visitor. Employee privacy is covered by FCPA and HIPAA. Intellectual property laws address how employees may communicate a company'south IP across social media. FINRA, the securities cocky-regulatory arrangement, adopted a regulatory find on use of blogs and social networking sites.  But companies should expect the legal and regulatory surround to keep to broaden around social media as its touch on the business concern world becomes ameliorate understood.

Each company needs to consider three ways in which social media can touch it. First, it needs to address how employees use social media for their personal, non-company use.  2nd, it should consider how it and its employees use social media for the visitor's business objectives. Another consequence of social media involves where a company needs to set rights and responsibilities for the non-employees information technology invites to engage in its social media activities. This commodity addresses the first two uses of social media.

Companies and their employees have related, though not always complementary, interests in social media. Employees – whether for business concern or personal apply – look to social media to stay in touch with family and friends; for amusement during the mean solar day, such as during tiffin, or after hours, if they accept a laptop calculator they bring home; and to build and maintain a professional network and for professional didactics.  Companies want to acquire near the marketplace and needs and desires of potential customers; to stay in front of current and potential customers; to notice and plant a positive face for potential employees; and to reinforce the company's value to current employees.

Risks Companies Face

A review of numerous companies' social media policies³ indicates numerous risks that a company may face with employees' apply – whether for their personal or business purposes – of social media.

ane. Misuse of Work Time

• Accessing social media, like Facebook, for personal use while at piece of work.  With the increasing amount of fourth dimension that employees spend on social media sites, this risk is quickly growing that employees volition regularly access social media from work.

ii. Misuse of Company Resource

• Using a visitor computer, personal digital assistant or Smartphone to access social media, with risks of excessive bandwidth utilize, equipment 'wear and tear' or breakage, or access to improper social media (such as 'adult' or 'hate' sites).
• Using without permission the company name, logo, trademarks, copyrighted information or other intellectual property in blogs, discussion boards or other social networking sites that tin can infringe on the company'southward rights to and control over these assets.
• Using one'due south company email accost or a username that refers to 1'southward employment with the company. Some employees do not maintain a personal email account and and so rely on the corporate electronic mail for personal matters.

iii. Risk to Company Reckoner Systems, Network or Information

• Using a company calculator, network, personal digital banana or smartphone to access social media, with risks of introducing possible malicious software or other rogue applications, peculiarly for social media that involves accessing or downloading files.

4. Disclosure of Confidential or Other Not-Public Information

• Disclosing this information a) on discussion boards or in chat rooms, or b) as part of professional person social networking action though, not authorized to disclose it. As businesses turn to the Internet and social media to facilitate business, such inadvertent disclosure becomes a greater risk.
• Such disclosures tin can involve:
  -Sensitive information that harms the company's competitive advantage.
  -Data for which the company is required to ensure fair disclosure.
  -Production or other related data that may disharmonize with the visitor's official communications.

5. Disparagement or Harassment

• Inappropriately discussing colleagues, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders or competitors with colleagues or individuals outside the company on discussion boards, in chat rooms or through blogs or photo-sharing sites.
• Developing or compiling then displaying an audio stream or video – intended to exist humorous – but that makes fun of the employee's industry, profession or company.
• Posting or discussing others or displaying sure social media at piece of work that can lead to claims of harassment.

half-dozen. Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest can take many forms and tin can cross with other forms of misconduct, from utilise of company resource, use of one's piece of work position and other personal interests that conflict with one'due south duty to the company.

• Blogging or maintaining a website favorable to or critical of or posting data about an industry, visitor or related problems without disclosing one's employment with an interested company.  This also may be true for family members of someone who works for an interested visitor, or even former employees.
• Serving in an outside professional part, such every bit an expert on a topical discussion board, that conflicts with one's duty to his or her company.
• Maintaining a web log that accepts advert from his or her visitor's competition.
• Making a personal recommendation or endorsement of an individual or company that may suggest the company's support for the recommendation or endorsement.

7. Advertising and Marketing and Fair Contest

• Using instant messaging, a chat room, a discussion board or other social media to make recommendations or otherwise market place to electric current or prospective customers, in violation of visitor policy (whether the bulletin or the channel).
• Communicating critically near a competitor'due south product or service on a discussion lath and without disclosing one's employment with a competing company.

viii. Records Maintenance

• Sending communications over social media that the company is non able to retain for its ain records maintenance requirements.

nine. Espionage or Fraud

• 'Shopping' a competitor by pretending to be a potential customer and misrepresenting oneself in doing so.
• Posting a false review about a competitor's product or service.

10. Privacy

• Mistakenly or intentionally providing personal data of a colleague, customer or supplier on a word board or conversation room or through other social media.
• Disseminating another employee's postings without that employee'due south permission.

11. Personal Reputation Damage

• Posting personal data or nigh personal activities that leads one's company, a recruiting company or others to believe that the private is interim unprofessionally or otherwise inappropriately.  This situation can hurt the employer where the employee's personal reputation is tarnished and and so affects the individual'south business organization reputation.

Corporate Use of Social Media

Because of the many ways in which social media tin can be misused and thus lead to ethics and compliance problems, companies that plan to use this media for business organization purposes should consider setting standards and other expectations that address:

• Collecting and using personal and corporate data belonging to individuals who contribute.
• Creating or maintaining company-sponsored blogs, give-and-take boards, conversation rooms, audios/videos, contests, marketing activities and other social media, and employees specifically authorized to do so.  In certain instances, companies too may desire to limit employees authorized to contribute to these channels.
• Reviewing information to exist posted on company social media.
• Disclosing the company's sponsorship and ownership of sure posted materials.
• The company's rights regarding use, redistribution and memory of others' contributions to its social media.
• Disclosing whatsoever company conflicts of interest with information posted on its social media.

Read More than About Social Media'due south Impact on Compliance, Risk And HR

Establishing Realistic Expectations

Among the more than pregnant errors that companies tin make is setting standards and expectations that are impractical and so easily ready aside. A company needs to consider applied expectations in use of social media. For instance, a company that bans all employee personal use of social media in the workplace – and even institutes technological lockdowns to prohibit its apply on visitor technology systems – may do more damage than good when employees pull out their personal smartphones and tap into Facebook or Twitter at work.

Other considerations include:

• Employees' want to use social networking sites like LinkedIn that can involve listing one's visitor position and duties, and even posting testimonies of current and sometime employees or suppliers.
• Employees who admission social media while traveling on company business but seek to avoid conveying both a visitor and personal laptop computer.
• Employees involved in online activities with friends, such every bit sports puddle, that may require them to take activity during the work day to participate.
• Employees' desire to apply personal lunch time to 'quickly catch upwards on what's happening' on social media outlets. As more employees forgo the lunch outing for a quick repast at their desks, this activity becomes more common.
• Employees who identify social media applications that can help them improve their business and professional noesis. Professional person associations' websites may provide employees with additional knowledge that is helpful for their work.
• Employees who use social media, such every bit through Google or Bing searches, to cheque on prospective or current employees or suppliers when the data sources or data may not be accurate.
• Employees who are working longer hours and so rely on personal email or other social media to keep upward with family and friends considering they now have less time to do so afterward work.
• Employees involved in charitable or other community activities – and that may in office involve their visitor position – that utilize social media like meetup.com or Facebook groups to keep apprised of the activeness'south communications.
• Employees using social media for business research where a sure awarding's employ requires advanced approval, and the approving process is time consuming.

An effect taxing many visitor leaders is the caste to allow the younger generation, many of whom are highly good at Net applied science and are frequently 'connected', to 'stay connected' during work. On one hand is the argument that the 'wired' worker is a smarter, more technologically-savvy worker; on the other hand is the articulate take chances to work getting done or inappropriate conduct on the task.

An Effective Social Media Ethics and Compliance Initiative

A more robust ethics and compliance initiative is appropriate for those companies where social media is more than pertinent to its concern surroundings.  Some considerations for a company determining the depth and breadth of its social media ethics and compliance initiative include:

• Manufacture. Companies in an industry that rely on or are heavily involved in social media – such every bit entertainment, news, sports, dissemination, marketing and advertising, to name a few – should expect that employees will exist accessing online social media.
• Cyberspace access. Companies where many employees have regular Internet access and more oftentimes use the Net in their piece of work.
• Corporate social media apply. Companies that regularly use social media for their own concern purposes.
• Job function. Employees in roles that interact with social media activities more regularly – possibly communications, marketing, sales, investor relations, community diplomacy – should consider whether function-specific mechanisms are needed.
• External surroundings. Companies with operations in locations that are heavily 'wired' – like Japan and South Korea – should anticipate employees' regular use of and expectations to use social media. Companies in locations that have been traditionally 'underwired' only are rapidly becoming 'wired' should anticipate the problems that are likely to arise.

The U.Southward. Organizational Sentencing Guidelines' recommendations for an effective compliance and ethics programme have served as an important framework for overall corporate programs and tin be effectively applied to a social media initiative. This is not to suggest that effective management of social media requires its own stand-lone program every bit we accept seen with privacy, safety, anti-abuse or other central risk areas.  To the opposite, because social media is so much a part of other ethics and compliance topics, it should be well integrated in and part of a company's overall ethics and compliance program. (That being said, some companies where social media is a significant function of the business – like amusement or other media companies – may consider assigning a social media compliance officer.)  Still, as with any ethics and compliance hazard area, the overall framework should be fit to accost social media's specific characteristics.

Adventure Assessment

• As the social media landscape changes regularly and speedily, understand the current social media applied science and how it is being used. Tap into the knowledge of information technology staff and other social media-savvy employees in this effort.  Review current literature on the topic.
• Identify and assess the most probable risks to your business. All companies face certain risks; other risks may be more than specific to your visitor's industry or specific activities.
• Identify what social media your company uses in conducting its business concern vs. what is simply used by employees for non-business concern reasons. Ensure y'all explore what social media employees are using for business purposes, whether or not the company encourages or authorizes information technology.

Policies

• Allow employees know that the company has a vested interest in any ways that their utilize of social media may affect the company, their duties to the company, or their business concern responsibilities. Prepare policies that:
  • Recognize the value of social media to the company and employees' personal lives and that let its use to forward the company's goals while not unduly restricting employees' outside interests.
  • Realistically have a chance of beingness followed.

• Be clear about what is not allowed, what is restricted and what is permitted.
• Cross reference social media policies with related standards or policies, such as utilize and protection of business organisation resource and information and conflicts of interest.
• Because social media is quickly changing, utilise care not to be overly prescriptive so that policies speedily get out of date. Instead, gear up wide principles about proper use, such as "Do not communicate company confidential or non-public information through social media devices that reach an external audience without proper approval."
• Practice not forget use of electronic devices that may have a social component, such every bit cellular telephone 'texting' and smartphones.
• When the company relies on social media for its own needs, set up and communicate policies on its use by employees and external parties.

Procedures

• Establish procedures for:
  • Non-business organization use of social media. For case, if employees should receive approval earlier using the company name or their visitor position on social networking websites, ensure procedures be for them to obtain approval.
  • Whatever manager responsible for overseeing or monitoring their employees' employ of social media and for higher-level managers with broader supervisory oversight of employ of social media.
  • Employees involved in the visitor's concern employ of social media.
  • Functional employees involved in proper monitoring utilize of social media, such as information technology staff.
• Ensure employees have specific resource for more information and guidance as you likely have not identified all ways in which social media uses can thwart expert business organisation practices.
• Include internal procedures to assess any new social media that becomes a real presence. Information technology can be hard to monitor and set policies for the many different social media tools, and so at least seek to respond to those applications that become popular or that otherwise your visitor'southward employees are likely to use because of their field or the company'southward location or activities.

Communications and Instruction

• While in many cases dissemination of a social media policy may be sufficient, it tin be helpful at for work group managers to review the policy with staff, discuss its application to the work grouping'due south business and respond to any questions or concerns.
• More formal training is helpful for those employees who will use social media for the company's business and employees involved in monitoring employees' use of social media (specially to ensure employee privacy) and supervisory employees where take chances to employee privacy is smashing.
• Help managers understand how they need to help their employees and when they need to seek help themselves.

Monitoring & Auditing

• Decide social media use that your company'due south systems can easily monitor or runway to reasonably ensure compliance with related policies and procedures.  Wait to advisory and misconduct reporting systems as ane monitoring machinery.
• Every bit with a run a risk-based compliance initiative, consider establishing monitoring activities based on the gamble that sure social media tools or activities pose. For example, if very few employees have regular computer admission during working hours, it seems overwrought to assign someone to review their estimator activity for social media access. On the other hand, if your company regularly uses online discussion boards to market place its services and expertise, then monitoring employees' contributions to these give-and-take boards seems reasonable.
• If social media risks are significant, consider identifying an outside expert to audit your company's social media compliance program – even to assistance identify emerging and future risks.

Oversight

Effective oversight does not mean that a company needs to assign a social media compliance officer.  It means that a company should ensure effective accountability and ongoing management of social media utilise that befits its risks.  Large companies that rely heavily on social media may appoint someone to this role; many companies likely can become past on ensuring that the compliance office regularly reviews the social media compliance program on its own.  Also, the oversight might involve a committee comprised of individuals with responsibilities related to privacy, communications, information applied science and ethics and compliance.

Periodic assessment

Because social media is irresolute then apace, it is a good idea to periodically review the visitor's social media ethics and compliance initiative to ensure that the company is effectively managing in the changing surround.

Summary

As many companies are now experiencing, social media's use in the workplace poses numerous risks because it crosses then many different ideals and compliance topics and because its applications and use are apace and constantly changing. Merely as with all business topics, a company can successfully manage its own and its employees' personal employ of information technology by employing a common framework applied to most other ethics and compliance topics, albeit with some modifications specific to social media.  The sooner that a company gets its arms around utilize of social media the better it volition fare as the fast charge per unit of change in social media going frontward is expected; a runaway visitor will take further to take hold of upwards the later it responds to the claiming.

This article has been updated; it was originally published July 21, 2010.

Editor's Note: This is the 6th post in an ongoing serial on Codes of Bear by Jason Lunday. Follow this link to view all of Mr. Lunday's articles in his Codes of Conduct featured column series.

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Notes

Social media was used in training of this article.

¹ "What the Hell is Social Media? – in 2 Minutes," compiled and edited past Peter Kerwood, Merlin Entertainments Group., created by Kama Glober & Tim Fogg, ApartmenTwo Creative/4reel Films.

ⁱⁱ "Social Media," Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.com).

³ Including, amongst others, Cisco Systems, Dell, Entergy, ESPN, Fedex, Ford, Gartner, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.

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Source: https://www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com/managing-the-workplace-ethics-of-social-media/

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