Assignment: Social Media Policy & Executive Summary
You have been hired as an HR Specialist the company has asked you to draft a Social Media policy for the employees
Draft a social media policy for the employees. Write an executive summary and you need to consider these key questions (do not answer) before you draft the policy
A perfect social networking policy to cover these new media could be drafted using only a few words: "Be mature, be ethical, and think before you type." Ultimately, you may decide that such brevity is what you want for your business. For the sake of completeness, though, here are the seven most important questions to ask yourself when drafting a social networking policy.
o How far do you want to reach? Social networking presents two concerns for employers-how employees are spending their time at work, and how employees are portraying your company online when they are not at work. Any social networking policy must address both types of online use.
o Do you want to permit social networking at work, at all? It is not realistic to ban all social networking at work. For one thing, you will lose the benefit of business-related networking. Further, a blanket ban is also hard to monitor and enforce.
o If you prohibit social networking, how will you monitor it? Turning off Internet access, installing software to block certain sites or monitoring employees' use and disciplining of offenders are all possibilities, depending on how aggressive you want to be and how much time you want to spend watching what your employees do online.
o If you permit employees to social network at work, do you want to limit it to work-related conduct, or permit limited personal use? How you answer this question depends on how you balance productivity versus marketing return.
o Do you want employees to identify with your business when networking online? Employees should be made aware that if they post as an employee of your company, the company will hold them responsible for any negative portrayals. Or, you could simply require that employees not affiliate with your business and lose the networking and marketing potential Web 2.0 offers
o How do you define "appropriate business behavior?" Employees need to understand that what they post online is public, and they have no privacy rights in what they put out for the world to see. Anything in cyberspace can be used as grounds to discipline an employee, no matter whether the employee wrote it from work or outside of work.
o How will social networking intersect with your broader harassment, technology and confidentiality policies? Employment policies do not work in a vacuum. Employees' online presence-depending on what they are posting-can violate any number of other corporate policies. Drafting a social networking policy is an excellent opportunity to revisit, update and fine-tune other policies.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
o The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
o The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
o Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.