Social Media as an Internal Tool -- The Need For Strategy & Policy

Prompted by discussion from the Feb. 24 visit to Marist by a talented IBM communication team (read http://bit.ly/hubbVS), I located this video of IBM's Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications Jon Iwata speaking about the value of using social media as an internal (employee) communication tool.

In the video, Iwata dispels concerns and misunderstandings about social media and employees from a senior leadership perspective by making the following points.

“As with any use of Web 2.0, you have to get comfortable with control. You can’t control what employees are going to be talking about, or publishing, or stating. Are they going to criticize management sometimes? Of course, but they’re doing it anyway. Are they going to contribute ideas and expect them to be acted upon? Yes, to some degree. So, we [IBM] have seen great benefit of using social media inside the business for all of these reasons, and we can use them [social media tools] strategically.”

Elaborating on the issue of corporate control over social media, Iwata added:

“The first thing that we’ve learned about the issue of control when it comes to social media in your own workforce, is that almost every nightmare scenario you can come up with is probably already covered by existing policy and practice. And the top ones are things like:

-- disclosure of confidential or proprietary information.
-- criticism of management.
-- inappropriate language or attacks on individuals.

“Not only do you know what to do with the case of social media, but it’s easier to identify what’s going on.

“The biggest thing I’d say is to make it very clear in your guidelines, to the employee, you have to make it clear when you are speaking as an employee of the company, or as a citizen, in expressing a personal opinion or point of view. And, as long as that is really made clear, employees, we’ve found, can be trusted.”

Here's the interview with Iwata:



I also found the following video of Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist, responding to corporate concerns about the risks of social media and employee communication. According to Owyang:

“In order to respond, companies need to … understand that this is unavoidable, you can’t stop this groundswell of information… The best way to deal with this is to have a plan…. Only about 20% of this is about technology. The other 80% is about strategy, process, roles, having all the things internally lined up.”

Here is video of Owyang: