I too see this in my neck of the woods here in Canada, including the organisation for which I work, (a partially-publically-funded hospital); however this social media access is currently being reviewed and guidelines and policies are being developed. (My colleagues and I on the communications team have had access for a while now).
Vivienne's blog posting got me thinking more about the topic of why some organisations restrict their staff from accessing social media, and whether some sectors are too restricted by legal, privacy, or other restrictions, to fully participate in social media, in particular at the pace expected by online communities.
I think there are two reasons why an organisation limits staff access:
1. Public sector organisations, or any sector for that matter, do not want their employees using social networking websites during work hours for fear that they will become addicts on the Internet all day and be less productive at their work.2. Organisations want to prevent employees from communicating on behalf of their company, or from making inappropriate dialogue disclosing confidential information, or negative comments about the organization.
I think both reasons have some validity however these concerns can be alleviated by creating enforceable policies and guidelines. I still think reason #1 will be harder to contend with, as staff can easily become lured into communicating with friends or other contacts online when no one is looking; much less obvious than being on the phone. But in those cases, you have to trust your staff and focus on their performance and not micro-manage. If there’s an issue, it will show in their work. And apparently there were similar concerns every other time new communication technology entered the workforce – whether it be the telephone, the Internet itself, or social media sites. But I’m not an HR expert either.
On to what I do know, or am learning, anyway:
While organisations may choose to restrict employee access, temporarily or not, as much as this may seem contradictory in the interim, it is imperative that they do not ignore social media altogether; regardless of what sector they are in. In fact, public sector organisations may even have an increased need to communicate online in order to keep an open, transparent line of communication with their publics and ultimately, taxpayers, who they must be accountable to.
From a risk management or crisis communications point of view, organisations can not afford to ignore online audiences and what is potentially being said about them. Organisations need to be not only engaged in online social media, but also to incorporate these new communications into their strategies and communications planning.
They could technically continue to block employee access, while still engaging social media and online communities from the organisation itself, however this approach contradicts the open flow of communication to audiences, of which one is our internal audience - staff.
I’m sure with some public sector, government, and other legally-charged organisations, that have numerous bureaucratic restraints (as Vivienne discusses), it’s even more difficult to devise a strategy for online communications. Wright & Hinson said: “tensions exist between legal functions and the public relations or communications function” and their research suggests that approximately one-third (31%) of participants in their 2009 research paper “are aware of situations in which an organization’s legal function has impacted how the company manages blog and social media communication.”
Link to Wright & Hinson's paper:
Some telling comments come from their research respondents:
• “Blogs and social media demand real-time responses and this causes problems for companies that are required to vet all types of external communications through legal, which is not always easily done.”
• “Applying legal constraints to social media has a chilling impact on the effectiveness of modern communication.”
• “Legal will never be comfortable with social media because social media can not be controlled in traditional ways.”
On the other hand, some of the research shows that legal departments can be “a positive, proactive partner to us as we have developed guidelines for interaction with social media.”
Many organisations then, must be working with legal, privacy, and corporate strategy departments to create guidelines, and perhaps press secretaries and other government communications employees are creating similar?
Recently, I noticed Canada’s conservative federal government’s Department of Finance announce they were Tweeting the budget; that was quite the surprise, I thought.
I suppose they managed to devise some type of middle ground strategy that allows them to communicate online in a time-sensitive fashion, and directs them on how to provide responses to inquiries that can not be disclosed publicly, but still communicating that.
I think this is a good example of how even some relatively conservative and bureaucratic organisations are also beginning to engage social media, at some level.
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