Did you know that on average, employees are interrupted once every 10.5 minutes by social media updates, and it takes, roughly, 23 minutes for them to focus back on their work? – Chatelaine.com May 2013
FireMe! A twitter app that tracks tweets that could get people sacked, sent out 4,304 warning tweets in a three week period last year. From that, 249 of these people deleted the tweets within two hours. They found that during one week in June over 22,000 tweets were posted that mentioned hating a job or the boss.
I’ve got Loads of statistics like that showing how social media is impacting on organisations in a negative way. ACAS found that some employers are having difficulty in setting standards of behaviour for the use of social networking sites.
But Why?
Most of us are familiar with reports of employees being disciplined for posting inappropriate material on social media platforms, or employers acting unfairly and dismissing an employee when a warning and training would have been more productive, not to mention more cost effective. There seems to be a greater awareness of the risks, but not any greater understanding of how to manage those risks.
I’m currently out and about with ACAS North West presenting to the Forums on social media, reputation management and training staff on policy.
There has been a significant increase in the number of organisations that are getting a social media policy in place, but very little evidence of organisations rolling that out so that staff understand the implications.
Here are just a few cases that have hit the headlines in the UK over the last year.
- Home Office staff sacked for Facebook, MySpace and Bebo use.
- Six sacked at Met Police for ‘offensive’ social media use.
- A civil servant at the DVLA was fired after being caught using Facebook on his mobile phone during office hours, it has emerged.
- Lancashire Police staff sacked over social media leaking
- Student Loans Company staff sacked over Facebook posts
- Eleven work and pensions civil servants sacked for using Twitter or Facebook
- Up to five workers at the Department for Transport have been sacked for misuse of social media.
- Teacher sacked over Facebook photo
All of those organisations had a policy!
The real issue as I see it is that things have moved so fast that the majority of our adult population simply do not really understand how social media works. I am aware that people are signing policies without having read or understood them. So asking people to sign a paper policy does not ensure that they understand the implications of their actions. Having a signature does, as ACAS says, cover the employer against liability, but an employee losing their job, or accidentally publishing something on line that is harmful to the organisation, is still very costly all round.
Like ACAS, I prefer preventative rather than cure. In this instance that means training staff to understand the Dos and Don’ts and their responsibilities to the organisation in terms of not bringing it into disrepute and respecting privacy. Yet it’s that training element that’s missing in most organisations.
What if we trained all our staff so that they understand social media in terms of privacy, reach, responsibility to the organisation and to each other? That’s what I’m talking about at the ACAS Forums, and showing our 7 minute staff training film #THINK, as this is a training resource that simplifies the issues so that staff and volunteers can relate to them.
Training our staff is a great first step to dealing with reputation management issues.
What if we then turned all the doom & gloom and overwhelm on it’s head? Social media provides us with an amazing range of free tools that bring significant benefits to our organisations.
What if we stopped with the Thou shalt not, trusted our staff and developed a fully inclusive strategy with Everyone on board?
What if we turned every member of your staff into the eyes and ears of your customer care and ambassadors of your product or service?
How good would that be?
And if you would like to talk to me about working with your team please email jane@janebinnion.com
**To see more information and a 2 minute preview of our staff training film #THINK click here
This blog post is dedicated to Tony Burns, a man of high integrity and a no-nonsense approach to HR. A man that left us far too early and who will be greatly missed by everyone that met him.