4 tips on managing the legal risks of social media

Welcome to Melcrum's Social Media Newsletter

Chatting last week with online communications and social media consultant Lee Hopkins, it seems that "social media risk" remains a prime concern for organizations – especially among members of the legal team.

The risk of employees speaking out about their company, clients or simply venting opinions about fellow workers, results in a mixed bag of approaches. Thomson Reuters, for example, recently published a new code of conduct that forbids employees to write, blog or post about clients or colleagues. For other companies, guidelines which boil down to a simple "don't be stupid" has proved enough.

When developing an initial strategy for online discussions – be they blogs, forums or even microblogging such as Twitter – Hopkins recommends you "bring in the legal department right from the very beginning." But, how can you assure the legal eagles that corporate blogging is a safe and good idea in the first place? Their view is that employees blogging and podcasting in a loose, unregulated fashion puts the organization at risk, not only of a productivity sink (as people spend work time blogging on issues of personal interest), but also that the content they produce is harmful to the company, either as bad PR or as potential legal liability.

In the social media report, we looked at how you can manage the risks of online discussions, and included these 4 tips:

1. Look to those with experience
If you’re keen to get some form of blogging started in your organization, but still have work to do to allay internal fears and concerns, take advice from those who've already braved the skeptics.

At Nortel, the communication team had to convince the doubters to trust employees by reminding them that the code of conduct, certified annually by every employee, would still apply to blogging as it did to any other form of employee interaction. They were also reminded that a blog that exists inside the company firewall is actually safer than an internal email, which can simply be forwarded on to anyone outside the company.

2. Not a new problem
These sentiments are echoed by Philippe Borremans, former new media lead in Europe for IBM communications and now managing director at the Blackline Consultancy. When IBM took the lead by publishing blogging guidelines, Borremans noted that this was simply a way of recognizing that, like it or not, blogging was already happening among IBMers, just in an unregulated way. "We knew our employees were blogging anyway, so we decided to try to put some structure around it," he says. "It came as a response to what was already happening, rather than us pushing it."

While he would agree that those in regulated industries need more control, Borremans, rejects the idea that this is a "new" problem presented by social media – everything that needs to be said is, in all likelihood, already expressed in existing guidelines and policies.

3. Follow existing strategy and policy
"Your social media strategy in itself should reflect the strategy of the organization," he says. "But, likewise, when you come to developing blogging or podcasting policies in response to this panic about 'unregulated content', you find that it often simply falls out of existing company policy."

In other words, social media represent no more of a risk than loose tongues at a client site or a badly thought-through email – which is something the company probably already has policies around. "We hire people because they're professional and trustworthy," he continues. "Nevertheless, everyone signs on to our Business Conduct Guidelines when they join IBM, and employees have to sit an exam once a year to reinforce it. With that in place, there's no reason to make a big deal about, say, blogging. It's just like any other employee interaction, it should follow the same rules of conduct. To say that makes it consistent with everything else, rather than making it a special case, takes the pressure off communication to 'develop' something new and jazzy and, finally, takes the heat out of worries over content."

4. Communicate clear guidelines
Communicating clear guidelines around what employees can and can't do is a simple and obvious way to address most of the risks presented by corporate blogging or any other social media. These don’t have to be lengthy documents – in fact, the shorter and more to the point, the better.

Until next time,

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