Employee Social Media Use & Brand Damage

Today's topic is both a pivot and a policy. Pivot: Social Media Use. Policy: Your Employees Use It and It Can Bite You.

Social media is everywhere and constantly evolving with more and more platforms coming online every day. Even the most savvy marketing/PR professional can be hard pressed to keep up. You want your company to be visible, to interact with your clients, your audience and to get all the great news about your wonderful products and services out in front of that audience. So your marketing/PR team works to keep your website and social media accounts fresh, no stale news to be found. All top of mind awareness, lots of reach and frequency, etc. However....

What about what your employees are saying about you? Do you know what they are saying about you? Do you treat them as your audience as well? In all the focus on the external audience are you overlooking the internal?

The optimist in you wants to capture all the "it's a great place to work" and "we make/do great stuff" remarks on social media and point to them as evidence that your company is wonderful but the pessimist in you worries about the disgruntled, having a bad day, just plain not happy employees. What are they saying? Are they bashing you? Can it hurt your business if they are? Can it impact your brand identity?

The answer is... kind of, potentially. 

First thing to remember: once something is out there on the Internet it never dies. It's doesn't go away even if the original post is removed. Odds are it has been shared, copied and bounced around the web by other people besides the originator. And the originator has followers even if it is only family members and THOSE people have followers. So you can't simply make it go away by demanding a negative post be taken down and assume that fixes the problem. You have to address the problem itself. HOW is this situation reflective of the company brand? WHY is the employee upset? WHAT can you do about it (if anything)?

Second thing to remember: everyone has a bad day on occasion and they are going to complain about it. Social media gives people a much larger platform on which to voice that complaint. Unless it is really, really bad you are better off to ignore it. Although if you are friends with this person on Facebook and this has been going on for a while or seems severe, you might want to ask if they are okay. Again, addressing the problem. Just don't do that online. You could inadvertently start an online argument and no one wins those. That sort of thing can damage your brand identity especially if you are trying to maintain a warm and fuzzy persona. Remember it will be viewed by others, potentially shared and never go away.

Third thing to remember: unless you have a policy that clearly states employees are not to exhibit your logo, list their place of employment, disparage the organization and/or its clients/customers in ways that will damage business on their social media pages there isn't a thing you can do about it expect ask politely that they please refrain. Keep in mind the courts have been going back and forth on what you can and cannot enforce in regards to social media use by employees. In some circuits the employer wins these things, in others the employee wins and then BAM! next case it flips back the other way. Don't expect the courts to help you if you fire someone over social media use and they sue you. Take a deep breath and don't overreact.

Of course if the employee is using your computers during work time to bash your organization, you can approach the behavior from a use of employer-owned equipment for personal use and engaging in time loss activity while at work. The exact same way you would if you caught them shopping online during the work day. After all, you aren't paying them to complain about you online, or to shop. 

The best defense? Approach this from an internal marketing/PR perspective: Ask yourself, how can I build a culture that promotes positive engagement by employees? How do I "sell" this culture to my internal audience? How do we go about living this culture? How can this culture foster positive social media marketing? How can the company tap into this positive engagement to further the brand? Your employees are a resource as well as an audience. How are you engaging them in this way? 

Focus on the positive but be aware of the negative. See the negative as a concern, a problem that you can address with the employee(s) and ultimately resolve. Just as you would if the problem had been brought to your attention by an external client/customer. Maybe you had no idea there was a problem until it popped up on the employee's social media page(s). You can't fix what you don't know about after all. But once you know, you can pivot the negative into a positive.

Here's an article that might be of interest regarding employees and the employer brand (click here).