Big oaks from little acorns grow. Big corporations started life as an SME at some point. This means that you need to start as you mean to go on; it’s really tough to change the way people do things once they’ve got into a habit.
This means that – even before you start recruiting your first member of staff – you need to have established what you expect from them in relation to the company’s reputation.
In fact, back up a step. When you are recruiting new staff, don’t forget to check out their online activity. It will be a good indicator as to how they manage their personal reputation and ensure you dot the Is and cross the Ts if you have any reservations before they start work for you.
Salutary tale!
A company was recruiting and had interviewed a number of people, finally settling on one young woman, who performed well at interview and had a good supporting CV. Then someone remembered to check out her social media.
To say it was peppered with expletives is underselling the facts. After some consideration they decided that this wasn’t the kind of language they wanted in their workplace and offered the job to their second choice.
Interestingly, the original choice candidate never knew why she didn’t get the job.
The minute you start employing people you need to have a simple social media policy in place. The big companies usually have a comprehensive social media policy, but the kind of policy that they have isn’t appropriate for a small organisation.
We all know people who work for bigger organisations and abuse their employer by spending far more than their break time updating their social media for personal reasons. Some bigger organisations ban social media use, but that’s not good business for two reasons:
- If you treat people like children they will respond accordingly and simply use their smartphones to access their social media – and, possibly, brag about putting one over on their employer.
- If you stop people using social media at work, you’re missing an opportunity for them to use it positively to promote your business.
The challenge for all businesses, but particularly smaller ones, is to get it right from day one and then keep the momentum going.
Treat people like adults – lay out the ‘rules’ (your social media policy) and explain how you would like them to use the world of the web and then trust them to stick to that.
That doesn’t mean abdicating any responsibility. It’s part of your job to monitor your reputation so a weekly search of the web for comments about your organisation, you personally and, possibly, individuals on your team is good practice.
If you discover members of staff who don’t comply with the social media policy they’ve agreed to, then you – and they – must know exactly what action you will take if they step over the acceptable line. This may differ depending on the type of transgression.
And, given that so many small businesses use outsourced services, it’s equally important that all contractors understand your policies about social media and that these extend to them. In fact, have the social media policy included in the contract.
