The new battle – Social Media in the workplace

IT says NO Marketing say YES HR is the umpire

Workplace social media policy challenges

There are a number of challenges facing companies in relation to the use and misuse of Social Media by employees.

There are issues around

  • productivity
  • GenY expectations
  • control / moderation
  • data and confidential information leaks
  • company reputation
  • staff retention
  • cyberbullying

One of the biggest challenges, outside the threat of cyberbullying, is the war which rages between the  I.T., Marketing & H.R. departments.

Marketing Playground

Social Media is the biggest and best playground a Marketing department could hope for.  It’s like the greatest playground you can remember as a child; with swings, slides, roundabouts, climbing equipment, and every other possible bone crunching source of childhood enjoyment you can think of – multiplied by 100!!  The challenge for Marketing is controlling and maintaining the information which is presented, both by the company and it’s customers.

IT Challenges

For the IT department, Social Media is like a minefield, or one of those elite defence-force obstacle courses, with barbed wire, mud, huge vertical climbing walls, and moats with hungry sharks and ravenous piranhas in it with a single thin frayed thread to swing across it!  The only weapon available to IT departments to combat this threat has been a massive bomb dropped squarely on the source of the offending technology – block all access.

HR Considerations

1. Between a rock and a hard place

Then you have the HR department caught up in the middle.  The umpire who has to balance between creating an inviting workplace for new young employees, maintaining a high level of productivity, monitoring possibly destructive interactions between office personalities and departmental communication requirements.

2. Workplace bullying

Additionally, much like the challenges of cyberbullying in the school environment, Social media does not magically turn off, or disappear when the employee walks out of the office.  There have been many reports of employees being reprimanded and even fired due to inappropriate social media activity outside work hours.  As part of the profile settings on social sites like facebook and linkedin, people will often place their current employer on show.  As a result of this, any drunken status updates or activities they partake in, have the potential to reflect poorly on the organisation they work for at that time.

3. Monitoring, Detection and Action

Detecting activity such as this would generally be a manual process, and not often picked up by less socially-proactive or tech-savvy companies.  For every reprimand enforced, hundreds of reputation-damaging activities would simply go undetected.

Is there an answer?

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to free up IT resources so they can get on with the job of maintaining critical systems?  Wouldn’t it be great to give marketing the freedom to take full advantage of social media in a controllable environment to expand your company’s exposure?  Wouldn’t it be fantastic for the HR department to be able to concentrate on important workplace concerns, like staff retention and development?!

Wouldn’t it be great!

Has your company encountered any of these issues?  Have you seen examples of social media sabotage in your office?  Has productivity dropped as a result of relaxed internet policies?

Askkiz has been researching these topics for a number of months now, and we believe we have partnered with the perfect solution provider to assist in providing the right departmental balance, combat workplace bullying and protect your companies reputation online too.

The technology is unique in the marketplace and offers solutions to all the issues discussed above.

Contact us for more information
or call me directly – Kieran Cook – 0409 905 025

Review information related to the CyberSafe Office HERE

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