Policy Brief & Purpose
Our social media company policy provides a framework for using social media. Social media is a place where people exchange information, opinions and experiences to learn, develop and have fun.
Whether you’re handling a corporate account or using one of your own, you should remain productive and avoid damaging our organization in any way. This policy provides practical advice to avoid issues that might arise by careless use of social media in the workplace.
Scope
We expect all our employees and contractors to follow this policy.
Also, by “social media”, we refer to a variety of online communities like blogs, social networks, chat rooms and forums – not just platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
This policy is built around two different elements:
- using personal social media at work and
- representing our company through social media.
Policy Elements
Using personal social media
We allow our employees and contractors to access their personal accounts at work, but we expect you to act responsibly and ensure your productivity isn't affected.
Whether you’re using your accounts for business or personal purposes, you may easily get side-tracked by the vast amount of available content. So, please restrict your use to a few minutes per workday.
We ask you to be careful when posting on social media, too. We can’t restrict what you post there, but we always expect you to adhere to our confidentiality policies. We also caution you to avoid violating our anti-harassment policies or posting something that might make your collaboration with your colleagues more difficult (e.g. hate speech against groups where colleagues belong to).
We advise our employees and contractors to:
● Ensure others know that your personal account or statements don’t represent our company. You shouldn’t state or imply that your personal opinions and content are authorized or endorsed by our company. We advise using a disclaimer such as “opinions are my own” to avoid misunderstandings.
● Avoid sharing intellectual property like trademarks on a personal account without approval. Confidentiality policies and laws always apply.
● Avoid any defamatory, offensive or derogatory content. It may be considered as a violation of our company’s anti-harassment policy, if directed towards colleagues, clients or partners.
Representing Our Business
Some employees represent our company by handling corporate social media accounts or speak on our company’s behalf. When you’re sitting behind a corporate social media account, we expect you to act carefully and responsibly to protect our company’s image and reputation. You should:
● Be respectful, polite and patient, when engaging in conversations on our company's behalf. You should be extra careful when making declarations or promises towards customers and stakeholders.
● Avoid speaking on matters outside your field of expertise when possible. Everyone should be careful not to answer questions or make statements that fall under somebody else’s responsibility.
● Follow our privacy policy and observe laws on copyright, trademarks, plagiarism and fair use.
● Inform our Director when you're about to share any major-impact content.
● Avoid deleting or ignoring comments for no reason. You should listen and reply to criticism.
● Never post discriminatory, offensive or libelous content and commentary.
● Correct or remove any misleading or false content as quickly as possible.
Disciplinary Consequences
We'll monitor all social media postings on our corporate account.
We may have to take disciplinary action leading up to and including termination if employees and contractors do not follow this policy's guidelines. Examples of non-conformity with the employee social media policy include but are not limited to:
● Disregarding job responsibilities and deadlines to use social media at work.
● Disclosing confidential information through personal or corporate accounts.
● Directing offensive comments towards other members of the online community.
If you violate this policy inadvertently, you may receive a reprimand. We expect you to comply after that, or stricter disciplinary actions will apply.