I am very intrigued by the role (and havoc) that Social Media is playing in the workplace.  It would be very interesting to be able to compare the number of businesses that have been hurt by it versus the number that have been helped.  My gut tells me that if your organization is an ethical and fair place to work, there should be no fear.  If you have something to hide, watch out.  (Check out Drowned Rabbits)

That being said, you can’t please everyone all the time and there will always be a disgruntled employee out there ready to speak negatively about their company to anyone who will listen.  This has always been true, but social media sure broadens the reach and power these people have.

Unfortunately, it seems like the answer is to regulate, regulate, regulate.  I will go back to my previous post regarding trusting your employees.  How much money and effort should a company invest in trying to control that which is pretty uncontrollable?  There is no doubt that social media can cause a lot of problems for businesses.  But people are people and you cannot control what they will do. 

Don’t most people in the world understand that there will always be others who want to get a rise out of people?  It seems to me that this is not a new issue.  Only the vehicle with which to abuse company time and spread negative messages is new.  Most individuals will take corporate bashing with a grain of salt.  One well-known aspect of social media is a lack of reliability – you can’t believe everything you read.  What is the main issue from a manager’s point of view?  What employees are saying, or the time they are spending on the company dime to say it? 

I think another important consideration is the ability to do all this social media stuff on cell phones.  If it is on the computer at the office at least you can monitor it but if you try to prevent that, won’t people just use mobile devices? And then who knows what they’re doing or how often?

Do you work hard to control this or do you have faith that the company’s reputation will prevail?

I would think that one of the best solutions would be to have some guidelines that ask an employee to respect what they are being paid to do just like with email, surfing the net, and making personal calls.  Guidelines make you think, but a list of punishable offenses complete with threats of firing just creates ill will.  I have a friend who worked at an organization where the employees couldn’t even use Yahoo or LinkedIn.  Want to guess what the morale was like at that office?  I like the idea of “Give and You Shall Receive.  Trust and respect your employees and they will give you trust and respect in return.  (Here comes my idealism again.)  What if you allow them the freedom to participate in social media and they say all good things?  Now you’ve just done your organization a huge favor.  What does it say about a company whose employees like what they do and how they do it?

Another risk of restricting use is a passive aggressive revolt.  What if your employees join forces and form groups in social media where they go specifically to bash their company?  What if they let anyone join who wants to know what goes on there?  Negativity will just feed on itself and will hurt the company’s reputation and brand in the long run.

I’d love some comments from HR people who have to enforce strict rules as well as those who don’t have any at all.  I’d also love to hear any stories of successful management of social media.