Your guide to developing a social media policy for your employees

A tool to curtail your employees’ social media usage by force is not something that a sane mind would recommend to you. You need to carve out a policy for employees that will engage, delight, and empower them. A comprehensive set of guidelines detailing when and how employees should and should not use social media should be made.

Traditionally, social media policies of companies include the following:

  • A definition of the policy along with the reasons why it exists
  • The barriers of the policy
  • General guidelines of the policy
  • Unsuitable use of social media
  • Enforcement of the policy

The ambition of these guidelines should be to protect your company and its employees from personal or legal attacks. And in many ways, these guidelines are like corporate HR policies that are designed to prevent discrimination and harassment. It attempts to set behavior standards for employees for their interactions on the internet.

Traditionally, social media policies have been about what employees should not or are not allowed to do on the internet. Today, the businesses that continue having a negative social media policy are losing out. And rightly so, because it often leaves employees feeling entrapped. Moreover, creating a social media policy for your employees is not a tough nut to crack. Sure, you need to involve multiple departments of your company, bring several people onboard, and step warily around social legal issues, but at the end of the day, it is worth it.