Web 2.0 risks: employee discussions online

In our recent survey on social media and corporate comms, some 45 percent of respondents agreed that employees discussing the organization online posed a risk. Now, a new survey commissioned by Clearswift and conducted by YouGov says, "42 percent of company employees aged 18 to 29 had discussed work-related issues on social media websites."

More from the article on BusinessWeek:

[...Ian Bowles, chief operations officer for Clearswift, said: "The younger generation have never known a business world without the internet. Young office workers come out of university having used social-networking sites. They see nothing unacceptable using corporate resources for personal use. Content is king. If you have policies around content, you can control what's going on, and prevent partial disclosure of financial results, or product design leaks."]

There's two points there for me:

    1. "If you have policies...".

70% of respondents to our survey said their organization didn't have policies in place regarding social media and "web 2.0".

    2. "...you can control what's going on, and prevent partial disclosure of financial results,         or product design leaks."

Aside from the dubious use of the word "control" in this context, does web 2.0, or more accurately do web 2.0 tools such as blogs, actually pose more risk than "tools" such as e-mail? I'd say no, not by themselves but they do pose added risk on a whole. By this I mean forums have been around for ages, as has e-mail. People have been more than capable of spilling beans and letting cats out of bags long before anyone uttered "web 2.0."

And an employee, be they existing or just coming from university where they're "used to using social networks etc etc" may be just as likely to have commented on a forum five years ago as they might comment on a blog today. There's no discernible difference from what I can see.

However, what the huge increase in available conversational mediums does do, is increase the opportunities people might have to spill the beans or discuss work issues.

So before when you had a forum, now you have a forum, a blog, a social network and maybe a podcast.

More opportunities to blurt = more risk.

Incidentally, in our survey when we asked people if social media tools posed more risk than traditional tools:

• 26 percent agreed that social media tools did pose more risk.
• 38 percent disagreed
• The rest were not sure.

What's more, over 40 percent of respondents said they did not know how to monitor online conversations about their organization. So as a rough interpretation, potentially over 40 percent of organizations could have an employee or several employees out there right now doing serious damage to their organization online, intentionally or otherwise and nobody will know anything about it until the situation has snowballed into a big, big... well, snowball.

As time goes on and I spend more time looking at the survey data (some of the most interesting stats and analysis will make it into our forthcoming report on social media), not only is my brain frying ever so slightly, but the figure of 70 percent of organizations not having guidelines really does keep coming up as scarcely believable, especially in light of the other stats mentioned here.

Seriously, if you haven't got guidelines or a policy in place for social media, it really has to be worth looking at. They don't take much to put together and as much as an employee who then steps over the line will have limited recourse, without clear guidelines you are, conversely, doing them a disservice.

For two very different styles of guidelines to help you get an idea, here again are the examples from Sun Microsystems and IBM.

Alex Manchester