How a Social Media Policy can Protect your Business
With the risks in mind for what social media can do, implementing a social media policy into your work policies can help you and your employees ensure that social media's risks are less likely to affect the business.
Now, you can’t tell your employees what they can and cannot post outright due to infringing on their rights through the National Labor Relations Act, especially in their personal time.
However, you can inform them of ways to use social media responsibly and make policies that limit their interactions with social media while on the clock.
Some aspects of a social media policy you should include in your business are:
- Guidelines on how to use social media responsibly.
The main goal of your social media policy is to inform those who work within your business how to manage their social media use positively to limit the negative effects of social media.
- Security and confidentiality measures.
Include a section of policy to prohibit those within your business from sharing confidential information from your business, clients, and other members of your business.
- Limit social media use within the business.
As an employer, you can request your employees stay off their phones or other devices they use on the clock and make sure they use work devices only for work-related tasks.
- Rules against defamatory and inflammatory comments and statements.
While employees can speak on social media about “concerted activity," you can make policies that prohibit comments or remarks that can be seen as defamatory or inflammatory towards your business.