When drafting a social media policy, how do you give your smart, passionate and opinionated team the freedom to manage their own affairs on social media sites, while also ensuring you’ve signalled your expectations about behaviour to them, so they (and the organisation) can be clear on what’s ok and what’s not ok? It may sound wanky, but the fact is if something goes wrong, you don’t want to be in the position where policy vagueness leave your company or your employee vulnerable to censure either internally or externally.
Here’s the draft social media policy I’m working on at the moment. It’s part of a larger communications policy. I’d welcome your thoughts on whether this frames the organisation and its team’s rights and responsibilities clearly enough.
The use of social media by [organisation] and its projects is supported by [organisation], and any official [organisation] or project presence on social media is subject to this communications policy.
Personal social media accounts of our staff are not bound by this policy. We respect the privacy and maturity of our staff, and trust they’ll reciprocate by ensuring that if they talk about [organisation] and its projects in any public forum (including social media) they’ll do so in a professional manner.
Comments or examples of ways to do this better would be welcome!
