US execs struggle to balance social media usage

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

The speed and immediacy in which social media can target and reach an audience is unprecedented and something corporations have never had to deal with. Until now. Companies and individuals can talk to one another faster and with more impact than has ever been witnessed. We can complain, praise, raise controversial issues, create instant debate, mull over life’s trivialities and share any and every piece of information we like with whomever we like wherever and whenever we like.

We are lucky. Or so you’d think. On the flipside and as accounting firm Deloitte’s latest ethics and workplace survey of 2,000 US employed adults shows, the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences and observations to social networking sites can have far reaching ethical consequences for individuals and organizations. Therefore, as Sharon L Allen, chairman of the board at Deloitte says in her introduction, it is important for executives to “be mindful of the implications and to elevate the discussion about the risks to the highest levels of leadership”.

For example, 74% of employed Americans believe it is easy to damage a brand’s reputation via sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Just think back to the now infamous YouTube video of Dominos Pizza, where a number of employees were doing rather vile things to the company’s products. Millions of people saw that clip irreparably damaging the company’s brand forever.

Brand risk – the executive view

Surprisingly, the firm found that only 15% of executives were addressing the threat of online organisational risk in the board room, while a larger 58%, the majority of them perhaps not having acted upon these risks, agreeing it was important to address these issues and take them more seriously. Reassuringly, but equally low, a mere 17% were found to have programs in place to monitor and mitigate the potential risks related to the use of social networks.

Employee privacy – the executive view

The increase in the use of social networks in the home and the workplace has meant that the line between public and private lives has become more blurred than ever before. Adding your superior to your ‘friends’ list on Facebook or ‘following’ him or her on Twitter has led to a number of firings and unfortunate incidents so it was interesting to see that this study found that a whopping 60% of executives said they “had the right to know” how employees portray themselves and their organizations online, while 53% of employees believe that social networking pages are “none of the employers’ business”. Rather shockingly, it seems that employees using social networking sites do not give any thought to what their employer’s reputation or the risks they might be putting their company under by talking about them online. Nearly a third of employed respondents said they never consider what the boss would think before posting material online.

So what should a leader and his internal comms team do to mitigate online reputational risk? Well, establish clear policies, protocols and company guidelines may not be enough as nearly half of the US respondents said that clearly defined guidelines would not change how they behave in cyberspace. The key, according to Deloitte, is implementing an emphasis on culture, values and ethics within your organization. But to conclude, not every executive or employer is out to get their staff; the survey found that 56% of executives said that using social networking sites helps their employees achieve better work-life balance. Now isn’t that sweet?

Key findings:

Employees:

• 74% of employees say it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation while using social media.
• 53% said their social networking pages were none of their employers’ business.
• 61% said that even if employers were monitoring their online activities or profiles, they would not change what they were doing.
• 49% said a company policy on how they behave online would not alter their behaviour.
• 24% said they didn’t know whether or not their company had a policy about the uses of social networking channels.
• 15% said that if their employer did something that they didn’t agree with they would comment about it online.
• 27% don’t consider the ethical consequences of posting comments, photos or videos online.
• 31% of employees said that using social networking sites helps them achieve better work-life balance.
• 22% visit networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube five or more times a week, while only 6% access them during work hours.
• 7% said that in the past six months at least one of their colleagues was made redundant because of inappropriate behavior online.

Employers:

• 58% of executives agree that reputational risk should be a boardroom issue, but only 15% say it actually is.
• 40% said that employees’ social networking pages were their business, while 30% admit to monitoring social networking sites.
• 56% of executives said that using social networking sites helps their employees achieve better work-life balance.
• 31% of CEO’s are on Facebook, 14% have a Twitter profile, while 18% have an employee created Facebook group.
• 23% use social networking as part of their internal communications strategy, while 21% use it to engage their employees.