Social Media Policies in the Workplace

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES IN THE WORKPLACE
SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES IN THE WORKPLACE
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1SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES IN THE WORKPLACE
To: Paul Morgan
CC: Alice Jones
From: Jane Wilson
Subject: Social media policies in the workplace
Respected Sir,
Social media is a growing phenomenon in the workplace. In recent times social media
has helped in shaping up the world. The demand and influence of social media has helped
organizations to understand its importance and has lead to the use of social media in the
workplace for employee productivity and development of the organization. It is widely being
used by organizations to help the organizations in many ways like enhancing the productivity
of the organization, building strong relationships between coworkers and enhances
information delivery and discovery (Cao et al. 2016).
Challenges of social media tool
The use of social media has been beneficial for most organizations in order to connect
with their target audience and receive feedback that has helped organizations to make
sustainable changes that has helped the organizations to succeed in the market. However
social media has always not been a blessing to an organization. The company Sunshine 100
has faced backlash because of misuse of social media. It is difficult to manage the challenges
that comes because of the misuse of social media is because it has reached the consumers
directly and nothing can be done rather than being apologetic to the consumers or be
transparent (Jamali et al. 2019). It is difficult to overcome from the damaged caused by social
media. Use of social media has come up with new challenges that organizations have to deal
with and it becomes more difficult to handle the challenges when compared to traditional
communication challenges. Social media is an open platform where all the people are present

2SOCIAL MEDIA POLICIES IN THE WORKPLACE
and can view the activities of an organization. Information on social media travels very fast
and becomes difficult to take down as millions of people share and download piece of
information (Balaji, Khong & Chong 2016). In traditional communication a crisis is
manageable as it is within the organization and it can be resolved within the organization
without people getting to know about it (Eisingerich 2015).
Impact of employees behavior on social media on organizations
Employees of an organization should be aware of their activities on social media. An
employee represents an organization and it is the duty of an employee to post responsibly for
their and the development of the organization (Briscoe & Gupta 2016). Any derogatory
remarks or activity by any employee of an organization on social media makes people think
that the organization promotes and advocates those thoughts that can harm the reputation of
the company. People do not want to associate themselves with a company that has a negative
reputation. The company Sunshine 100 was launching their food products for kids and the
post of the employee about junk food that the company was launching for kids became a
negative factor for the company. This has not only impacted the customers but has also had a
huge impact on the unintended audiences who may have thought of giving the product to
someone they know or close to them. People would not like to give someone anything that
has a bad reputation in the market (Taylor et al. 2016) This shows the impact of a negative
reputation of a company that affects the sales and the business.
Social media policies Sunshine 100 should cover
It is important for every organization to have a social media policy in order to ensure
there are no misuses of the social media that can affect and negatively harm the organization.
Social media influences many people and too some extent influences the buyer behavior
(Schivinski & Dabrowski 2016). An effective social media policy will help organizations to