Commonwealth Bank and the social media policy debacle

If you are involved in social media, you've probably heard about the recent blow up on Commonwealth Bank of Australia's social media policy. A copy was obtained by a news organization and published last week.

As noted in the article, most of the policy is pretty benign. Where they got in hot water was the reference to "Inappropriate or disparaging content and information stored or posted by others..." and then specifically gave the example of a friend posting an inappropriate comment about the bank on a FaceBook page. In that event, it is incumbent on the employee to notify others in the bank or face the possibility of disciplinary action.

Our organization has a social media policy. Every organization should have one. However, it is a huge leap from managing employees and their social media presence to the actions of their "friends". I use the quotes intentionally because many "friends" in social media would not be considered friends in the true sense of the word. In this case, the organization has set unrealistic expectations and, quite frankly, an extremely difficult policy to monitor.

Banning Social Media in the Workplace

I recently came across an interesting and disturbing statistic the other day. According to a Robert Half Technology CIO survey released earlier this year, over 55% of the 1,400 CIO's surveyed ban the use of social networking sites in the workplace. I really found that quite disturbing.

If the concern is productivity, individual employees in their 20's are as likely to be engaged via their smart phone as they are through their work pc. So they will find a way to engage their friends through these social outlets even when they are banned. It seems a strong stance to take in this day and age.

For corporate marketing, this may be the biggest constraint that individual marketers will face in using these tools. How can you build any type of meaningful social media engagement if your company bans it in the workplace? The better answer, in my opinion, is to build a social media policy that addresses these issues and draws the line between personal and corporate involvement. I addressed this in an earlier post this year. There is also an online database of other social media policies you may want to explore as well.

Follow Up on the Social Media Policy

I had an opportunity to reach out to a number of local Technology people about their social media policies, including Steve Kozak of the Greater Baltimore Technology Council and Larry Fiorino, the CEO of G.1440. Here's what I've found:

• A few companies have one. There is even a site that publishes corporate policies if you want to see some samples. http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php
• Other companies simply block access to the sites for all employees with no exceptions.
• Most other companies simply don't have a policy and don't seem concerned about it.

We finalized ours this week and it is a pretty good combination of suggested behaviors (Netiguette) while addressing the compliance and legal concerns. We'll be sharing this with our employees shortly and making it part of our Employee Handbook as well. In a highly regulated industry, we think it is important.

Developing a Social Media Policy

We've been grappling with a social media policy for the last couple of months. It's been an interesting process. Much of the content has been gleaned from other larger corporations who publish their policies. Our goal is to provide guidance to "official" bank social media participants as well as other employees as they engage in their social networks. Very challenging.

Let's face it. The line between business and personal is so blurred when you add in the social media component. Some of the questions we are dealing with are, for example, do you prohibit or simply discourage the use of social media sites during the work day? If so, how do you monitor this and what are the consequences if you are caught? These are just two examples of the challenges facing us in this highly regulated environment. I'd love to hear from others on how they are addressing these issues.