Your team have personal accounts, and some of them will mention the job. That can be good for you and for them, and it can go wrong. A short, friendly policy written before a problem is far easier than one written after.
What to cover
- Whether people may say where they work, and whether they should make clear that the opinions are their own.
- What stays confidential: customers’ names and details, unreleased products, prices, internal numbers.
- Photographs at work: when staff and customers may be shown, and who decides.
- What to do if a customer or a journalist contacts them about the business.
What not to do
- Do not demand access to personal accounts or passwords.
- Do not require staff to post for you, or to like and share everything.
- Do not police people’s private lives. The rules should be about work.
Make it easy to take part
If you want staff to share things, give them something good and make it optional: a photograph they can use, a link, a line of copy. A thank-you counts for more than a quota.
When something goes wrong
A post by an employee that embarrasses the business, or a complaint about one, is best handled in private first, calmly, with the policy in hand. Public arguments make it worse.
Leavers
When someone leaves, remove their access to the business accounts the same day. Our article on handing over access describes how to do it without sharing passwords.
A policy that fits on one page will be read. One that fits on ten will be filed.