The Workplace

In my 17 years as a senior level HR practitioner, I’ve seen good and bad corporate policies. The only real difference between the two is that good policies are those that employees follow. Social media policies are no exception. But the most effective policies don’t just keep employees in line. They set consistent, clear, and common-sense guidelines that free employees to do their jobs better.

Here are three key characteristics that should define your social media policy:

1. It’s Clear

Your employees need to understand why the policy is needed; this doesn’t mean they have to agree with that reason. It’s unrealistic to believe people will automatically support your policies. And telling employees to follow policies “because we say so” is more likely to increase resistance rather than acceptance. Instead, the key is providing context. The best way to increase employee buy-in is to frame policies within a context to which they can relate. For example:

“Because we want to guarantee consistent external messaging by our company, only employees who have received prior training and written permission from the marketing department to blog on behalf of our company are allowed to do so.”

Good policies also are followed because they clearly spell out what’s expected from whom, and in which situations. What’s the scope of the policy, and who are the employees to which it applies? What kinds of social media activities are covered? Does the policy apply to all employees? What about contract staff? The devil is definitely in the details. If employees lack clarity around these issues, they’ll turn to making educated guesses — the very thing you’re trying to eliminate by implementing policies.

2. It’s Consistent

Research shows that our reactions to unfairness are actually hard-wired in the brain. No wonder employees, let alone toddlers, will lash out when they are being treated unfairly. Put bluntly, there’s no better way for companies to create utter disregard for policies and a lack of faith in management than to hold certain employees less accountable than others. For example, you never want to hear this from one of your employees:

“Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal to post that kind of comment on Facebook since I know my boss does it all the time on her personal blog. If she doesn’t have to get approval to do that, then why do I?”

This is why it’s critical that policies be applied consistently across all employee levels, geographic locations and functions. A lack of consistency can quickly lead to rogue behaviors. The only exception is when certain policies must be followed by specific subsets of employees due to legal or regulatory requirements. In this case, make sure all employees know who the policy applies to, and why it only applies to those people.

3. It’s Useful

Useful policies free employees to perform effectively by lowering their odds of making missteps. Your employees are some of your best brand ambassadors on social media. But if they don’t know what’s acceptable, they may shy away from this role for fear of hurting their careers due to an honest mistake. Similarly, companies that have invested significant resources in social media for collaboration and innovation will see a much larger return on that investment if employees are not afraid to use these tools.

Dealing with the “grey zone” of day-to-day operations is often the role of the line manager who is repeatedly called upon to answer questions for areas where written policies do and do not exist. But having clearly documented and easily accessible policies — especially for fast-moving issues like social media — will save both supervisor and subordinate from ever having to utter that age-old expression of horror, “If only I had known!”

Guest Post on Effortless HR Blog

Many people are critical of the notion of social media experts, falsely claiming they don’t exist – and by extension implying they aren’t necessary. These criticisms, combined with the pervasiveness, low cost, and relative ease of use of social technologies, lead many people to assume (also falsely) that DIY and “give it to the intern” approaches are effective strategies for leveraging these new tools. This post counters some of the most frequent criticisms and articulates the need for social media expertise as a part of eCornell’s Tech Tuesday series from The Denovati Group.

Arguments Against Social Media Experts

In the context of new social technologies, “expert” is often perceived as a four-letter word, and many people decry the label “social media expert.” Certain critics have decided there is no such thing as a social media expert or social media expertise, offering arguments like the following to support their positions:

• It’s too new. False. The underlying technologies have been around for almost 20 years, longer if you consider some of their digital precursors. And the core characteristics – such as user-generated content and social sharing – date back to our earliest days on the planet.
• Things change too much and too often. That’s true, but the truth isn’t unique to this set of technologies and/or related disciplines. Professionals in many areas will quickly attest to the dynamism in their own fields, companies, and industries.
• Only a small elite can claim expert status. If we define expert in very narrow terms as a pinnacle achievement, then yes, only a few people can claim it. But if you look up the definition of the term and rely on its denotation, you’ll find it applies to a much broader group of people. Plus, I think it’s important to recognize that it’s a relative, as well as absolute, label. I may know a lot about employment law, for example, but I would defer to a labor law attorney as an expert in the field.
• It’s not just about the tools. Of course it’s not, but understanding how the technologies, tools, and platforms are used is critically important to success in using them. There are countless people who are “experts” in their core disciplines who would fail miserably in 2.0 spaces because of their lack of social media expertise. More on that in the next section.

Ironically, in an effort to minimize the importance of social media expertise, these critics are effectively holding social media to a higher standard than other professions, functions, and disciplines – where expertise is not only respected, but sought out. But the criticism is understandable to some degree: too many people convey false impressions of their expert status, presenting their knowledge and skills as being more comprehensive and/or in-depth than they are.

More often than not, when people make sneering references to social media experts and/or disdain the use of the term, what they’re referring to is the proliferation of charlatans in response to the dramatic growth of digital social media in the past few years. This proliferation may be unfortunate, but it’s hardly surprising and hardly unique to the Digital Era. Charlatans, swindlers, hustlers, hucksters, quacks, frauds, snake oil salesmen, and mountebanks are endemic to the human condition. It is wise to be wary of “false prophets,” but concerns about being misled shouldn’t cause organizational leaders to not seek out valuable guides to help them move forward in cyberspace.

The Need for Social Media Expertise

Regardless of whether we use the “expert” label, there are many reasons why organizations should invest in people with social media expertise:

1. The road to social media hell is paved with ignorance.

Cyberspace abounds with stories of social media failures, often by people who should have known better:

• Experienced journalists and public relations professionals who “tweeted without thinking”
• A CEO who set up a fake blog to disparage a competitor
• A teacher who blogged disparagingly about her students and a principal who friended students on Facebook using a false identity
• Community managers who fanned the flames of a Facebook attack
• Marketers and advertisers who underestimated the social media backlash to their companies’ campaigns or actions, or who created fake social media-based commercials and/or endorsements
• Human resources and legal professionals who developed overly-broad social media policies
• Hiring managers who engaged in unethical practices using social media

I could go on, but the point is that contrary to many critics’ core argument, social media isn’t “just” anything. Yes, it’s a set of tools and technologies, but it’s a very powerful set that can cause significant harm if used incorrectly. As I wrote in Social Media: From Novelty to Utility:

Saying social media is “just” a communications tool is like saying a nuclear power plant is “just” a way to turn on the lights.

2. Simple doesn’t mean easy

It takes less than a minute to set up a Twitter account. And perhaps another few seconds to send the first “is this thing on?” tweet. But the simplicity of the user interface hardly ensures one’s effectiveness in using the channel. There’s a new language and norms to learn, as well as hazards and mistakes to avoid. The same is true for other public platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr, and tools like blogging and wikis and videocasts and podcasts. Social media rookies regularly underestimate them, often to their own detriment.

3. Strategy trumps tactics

The ways in which an individual or organization can leverage social media are virtually limitless, but the ways in which they should leverage the technologies need to be driven by goals and objectives, industry and stakeholder characteristics, and a host of other factors, including a sophisticated understanding of whether and how social media would be more effective than traditional tools.

4. Change is hard

For most rookies – including organizational leaders – social media is threatening, intimidating and discomfiting. Bringing about the necessary changes to leverage social media successfully requires in-depth understanding of the technologies and their applications and implications, as well as the ability to translate that understanding into language lay people can understand and the ability to help them connect the dots.

5. Even when it’s your mountain to climb, having a Sherpa can help

I’ve been immersed in social media for over three years, not just as a practitioner, but as a student and teacher. I can say with confidence that it’s impossible for someone just getting started to quickly match the knowledge, skills, and understanding of someone who’s been intimately involved with new digital technologies for some time. More importantly, these “experts” can help rookies climb their learning curves more efficiently and effectively and provide guidance to increase the likelihood of success and minimize the risks of failure.

Degrees of Expertise

It’s important to recognize that there is no single definition of expertise and no “one-size-fits-all” model to leveraging that expertise. The most appropriate expert for a given purpose in a particular organization will depend on factors like the organization’s:

• Strategic goals and objectives, both short term and longer term
• Industry and client characteristics
• Level  of technological sophistication
• Financial resources
• Employee skill levels and capacity

Rand Fishkin of Moz provides a chart that offers a nice starting point for understanding different levels of social media expertise. I would argue that we can distinguish different levels of social media professionals the same way we might professionals in other functional areas: coordinators, analysts, managers, designers, planners, strategists, and advisors. Some organizations will need to acquire or develop individuals with expertise at all these levels, whereas others will only need some of them. For some the best solution will be to bring the expertise in house; for others it will be to use one or more service providers. And of course the right solution will change over time, as technology and an organization’s circumstances and needs continue to evolve.

Click here to view the updated post on the Denovati SMART Blog.

Yes, because social media influences every aspect of the organization, so it’s very important that you have a team that can bring those different perspectives when you’re creating the policy, and implementing the policy. It’s good to have different perspectives because social media is viewed differently by different members of the organization. So what that team can do is make sure that the policy that you create, and the policy that you implement, takes into account all of those different perspectives. So that you have a balanced policy that’s not too far balanced, or imbalanced, on the governance side, or not too loosely balanced on the implementation side. So that you have a good balance of both that you can share with your employees.

In general, what are the main challenges in creating and managing social media policy teams?

I think the main challenge in managing these teams is mainly more so on the logistics side of it, because usually when you involve people from different departments and different areas, there are a lot of logistics challenges in terms of setting meetings, in terms of setting agenda for meetings, in terms of maintaining the working committees that you need to have, and the subcommittees you need to have. It’s more of a logistical issue than anything else, because managing these teams, they’re people who are committed to the organization, so you’re not going to have a problem with their follow-through and their commitment. It’s just that this is one additional thing that you’re probably going to add to people at the senior level of your organization, who have priorities related to their organizational goals. So it’s very important that you do what is necessary to make sure that logistically, it is very simple for these people to be involved in the team. You make it very simple in terms of how you set the meetings, you make it simple in terms of what the scope of work you’re dealing with, the issues you’re dealing with, your goals. So that way you can maximize the time that you have.

What parts of the organization must be represented on the social media policy team beyond the typical HR, IT, and legal functions?

So when you have your foundation, then that’s kind of your first tier. Your second tier, folks that definitely need to be there, you need have someone there from your communications team. This is important because there has to be a definitive difference that’s set in terms of who are the official spokespersons for social media. So most likely your media team, public relations team, public affairs team, whatever it’s called in your organization, has probably set up criteria and standards for official spokespersons. They need to be at the table when the social media policy is being created, drafted, and implemented.

Beyond those folks who form the foundation, other folks that you have on the social media policy team should simply reflect your organization and those who have key touchpoints with your constituencies. So in many cases that means representatives from your marketing team are a part of it, as well as representatives from your customer service team may be a part of it. So those parts can be determined by your business functions and who has the potential to benefit most, use social media most, or who have touchpoints with the organization.

Is there a role for unofficial participants on the social media policy team?

There is definitely a role for unofficial participants. And to define that role, it would those who have a level of expertise, or understand or influence on social networks that can provide additional perspectives or inform you on ways that can shape your policy. It’s really important in organizations because one of the things we talk about at social media is done is that it really changes the way we look at influence. Your employees have developed these social networks, and a lot of times the folks who are most influential on social networks are not always at the top of the organizational chart. It is people who are distributed throughout your organization. And it’s really great because that allows your committee that is developing the policy to really not develop this policy in a vacuum, to really develop this policy in a manner where they have taken into consideration a snapshot of what’s happening in the social media world now and also created a policy that’s flexible enough to be adapted as social media changes. And the only way you can do that is by not just limiting your planning team members to specific levels of leadership, to specific departments, but also making sure there is room on the committee, a couple of seats, for those that have exhibited expertise in social media and who can share that expertise with the rest of the team.

Can the social media policy team help manage intergenerational conflict in the organization around social media behaviors?

[With a new social media policy,] there’s going to be a generational gap, yes, because you have groups of people who are digital natives, mostly your millenials who grew up in the social media era. And you’re going to have other workers who have been within the company longer and who have operated successfully in the company without social media. So now they’re being asked to adapt what they’ve done well for so long, to a new tool that they may not be aware of. So the social media planning team can be a good leader in that respect in a couple of aspects.

First, by commissioning some sort of research as to social media use and comfort within the organization. And conducting that research in a manner to have a correlation, or to establish if there’s any correlations between a certain generation and their comfort with social media. You may find that there’s not intergenerational differences, there may be interdepartmental differences. So what the social media planning team can do is make sure that similar to, like a city council or other governing body, that there’s a chance for public comment. While they’re developing this policy it’s almost like developing legislation. Make sure there’s a chance for public comment so you can identify the potential roadblocks and the potential issues that lie beyond that room.