Educating Employees to Mitigate Social Media Risks on Organizations

DO YOU HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY ON YOUR ORGANIZATION?

Global Digital Snapshot 2015

No matter where people

are, they’re

connected.

Source: We are Social – JAN/15

And Growing

Be sure, your

employees are part

of it.

Source: We are Social – JAN/15

What your organization is

doing to deal with this scenario and educate your

employees?

Food for thoughts

¨  According the Altimeter Group, in 2013*:

43%

38%

of the companies put Social Media Education as a top business priority.

had an educational program in place or in progress.

BUT ONLY

* Based on qualitative and quantitative surveys

In this way organizations may be

at risk in the social media world. It’s necessary to

plan the journey with your employees.

BEFORE

RECEIVER

TODAY

CONTRIBUTOR

EMPLOYEES AND INFORMATION INSIDE

ORGANIZATION

Basement

¨  Define who will be in charge of the social media inside the organization and the roles of each collateral partners.

¨  Prepare a plan for how you will address all components of the educational framework.

¨  Set your targets and milestones to follow and track the learning curve and its impacts over the business.

Mandatory Pillars

Establish the Policy

Introduce Social Media Skills Across

the Organization

Bring the Board

on Board

Building the Policy

¨  Must start and be in charge of a team with high skills on social media environment.

¨  It’s multidisciplinary: involves several areas of the organization (HR, Communications, IT, Institutional Relations, Marketing).

¨  Must take in to consideration different scenarios, dos and don’ts.

¨  It provides guardrails and examples of best practices. ¨  Aims to diminish the “shadow areas” of how the

employees must behave in the social media environment of the organization.

Examples of Scenarios and Policy Guidance

BUSINESS TRIP

OWNER

GUIDANCE

DO

DON’T

EVENTS COMPLAINTS

Personal Organization Organization

Align the understanding of the reason why the employee is there. It’s business not vacations.

No matter if it’s a relationship event or a product launch it’s a business perspective. The organization handles the content.

The organization has a specific flow inside its structure to support this task.

IF FAIL

Keep feeding your social media channels with your content.

Feed your social media channels with content related to the trip.

Like and Share the content produced by the organization.

Post comments or emit opinions regarding the event, product or people attending the happening.

Inform the area responsible for managing social media channels in the organization.

Answer or say something on behalf of the organization.

SCENARIO

Educate and Warn. If constant follow HR policies of the organization.

Educate and Warn. If constant follow HR policies of the organization.

Educate and Warn. If constant follow HR policies of the organization.

Spreading the Skills

¨  After establishing a social media policy for your employees, it’s important to spread the social media skills among the areas.

¨  The best way to make a policy successful is to educate the employees the reason why the organization is going in this direction to protect their assets and the employees are part important of it.

¨  It’s the second step: is necessary to promote social media inside the organization and encourage the use of official channels by your teams. The policy must not have the direction of prohibition, it must educate.

¨  Set your targets and milestones to follow and track the learning curve and its impacts over the business.

¨  Remember: a good use of social media channels can bring good information for organizations regarding products, services, customer care. It can drive increases in your sales and revenues also.

¨  It must be faced as a new business tool to support organizations’ strategy.

BEFORE

RECEIVER

TODAY

CONTRIBUTOR

EMPLOYEES AND INFORMATION INSIDE

ORGANIZATION

FROM SOMETHING STRANGE TO CHANNELS

TO SUPPORT AND INCREASE BUSINEES GOALS

Bringing the Board on Board

¨  Executive support is crucial to the success of your policy regarding social media. They’re the force inside the organization to drive the impact deeply and widely.

¨  If the management is not familiar to social media, a quick plan of training must be done. Focuses on key topics from social media and elect “counselors” to accompany them throughout the learning curve.

¨  Define what are the main targets you’ll follow with them and how often it will be done.

¨  Create an executive dashboard in order to track the impacts (positive and negative) and how these flags are increasing the organization business environment.

Bringing the Board on Board

AVOIDS

* Souce: Dilbert Comic Strips

Key Takes

¨  Top management support is crucial to the success of this work. Education through examples.

¨  No policy or guideline alone is enough to anticipate potential social media risk.

¨  Employees need to be trained to use their “better judgment” when engaging online.

¨  The policy needs to be clear to reduce the “shadow areas” of the judgment. It is to educate not to prohibit.

¨  A good use od social media channels can impact over your business in higher sales and revenues and knowledge of products, services, customer care.

¨  Follow the targets established in the policy and show their results (positive and negative) to all of the organization according to the findings you’ll have.

Thanks

Rafael Torres Marketing & Communications Executive

rafaelts5@gmail.com

br.linkedin.com/in/rafaelts/