Importance of Social Media Policies in the Workplace

This document discusses the importance of social media policies in the workplace and how they can affect employee productivity and company reputation. It explores the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in the workplace, as well as the challenges and potential risks. The document also provides recommendations for implementing effective social media policies to ensure positive employee behavior and protect the company's image.

Running head: SOCIAL NETWORK IN WORKPLACE
SOCIAL NETWORK IN WORKPLACE
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Memorandum
To: Manager
From: Director
Date:
Subject: Regarding explaining the importance of social media policies in
work place
Social networking is becoming an important part of the organization because of the
advantages that it gives to the employees and the employers (Srivastava, 2015). Through
social networking in workplace organizations are having a better communication network
amongst its employees and employers. They are being able to communicate important
information faster through the use of the social networking sites, the social networking sites
also helps in providing customers services, building public relations, it is being used as a
source of marketing (Mäntymäki & Riemer, 2016). About 35% Australia’s workers use social
networking in workplace for internal communication and other reasons. The main aim of the
study is to analyze the pros and cons of using social networking apps in workplace.
The introduction of social media tools across the organization can pose significant
challenges because of the lack of proper policies governing the use of social media (Nyaribo
& Munene, 2018). Some of the major challenges of using social media in workplace is that
the employees tend to spend more time updating posts than actually working. This can cause
deviations among them such that they will be more interested in using social media in the
organization than actually working and they will lose their interest in their work. Moreover,
another major challenge of using social media in an organization is that the material posted
by the employees may not be appropriate or it may be used in a wrong way by the company’s

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competitors to gain an advantage over the company. Managing these challenges not only
requires proper tools and technologies but in order to deal with these issues it is important to
have some policies within the organization regarding the proper use if social media and there
should be prohibition on posting in the social media because any post by any employee is
equivalent to posting on behalf of the company. The problems that were faced in traditional
channels of communication was the physical barriers, lack of interest on part of the listeners
or on part of the sender. Emotional barriers which does not allow a sender to communicate
the message properly because they will be preoccupied with that. The challenges of the
modern Medias of communication is that there is wastage of financial resources in terms of
the bandwidth used, there can be malware problems and other problems. The reputation of
the company is associate with the posts done by the employees. The productivity of the
employees is negatively affected (Osch, Steinfield & Balogh, 2015).
The social media is a platform that is used globally by people, organizations to
transfer some message, ideas and information to others (Ariel & Avidar, 2015). These
platforms are assessed by people through all countries so it is easier to spread any
information, ideas, news or messages faster. Facebook was the first ever platform to be
accessed so widely by people. These platforms have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Any information spreads so fast on Facebook that it can either make or break the reputation
of the people using it (Dijkmans, Kerkhof & Beukeboom, 2015). When the employees of the
company use social media and they also specify that they belong to such companies it can
threat to the reputation of the company. The information once posted or update once made
spreads very fast to all the people irrespective of whether they are the intended audience or
not. Whenever a company starts their own page on the platform and any posts made by
anyone on the page will be considered as an information made by the company. If these posts
show any negative image of the company’s product or service the information will be send

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across a wider audience and can hamper the company’s image. Therefore the company needs
to ensure that its employees are posting only after considering that they are making the posts
on behalf of the company. This is what happened with the Sunshine 100 Company. One of
their employees posted a picture of himself holding a product of the company and that has
negatively affected the company’s image.
The social media policy should include terms that prohibit the employees from
posting any update or image that can affect the company’s image (Stohl, Etter, Banghart &
Woo, 2017). The employees should remember the fact that anything they are posting is being
done on behalf of the company. Only those posts should be made on behalf of the company
that improve the company’s public relation and for advertising the company’s products. The
company can clearly state the content they want their employees to post and that they should
not post any content beyond that. The company should keep policies that ensure that the
employees should maintain a positive attitude towards the company and the same should be
seen in all their posts. The employees need to be courteous in their post on social media and
they should avoid making any negative comment on the company. There can be some more
social media policies that can be adopted by the company to ensure that any posts of the
employees does not hurt the reputation of the companies.
The communication strategy’s main purpose is to explain the areas that will be
covered by the social media policy and what cannot be done by the employees.

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Figure 1: communication template
Timing The plan will be executed on the 1st week of
May.
Audience The employees of the organization
Sender Trainers will communicate with the
employees
Key message We will discuss the social media policy with
the employees and what is expected from
everyone in terms of posting will be
discussed.
Desired outcome All the employees will understand the
policy of social media and adhere to those
and will make proper use of social media.
Medium There will be a session that will be oral
further the same policies will be regulated
using a handbook
Materials The resources needed for implementation of
the plan are human resources and
technological resources for blocking certain
pages.
Frequency The employees need to be reminded about
the policies in 20days

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Source: (created by author)

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From the above discussion it can be concluded that, social media can be used in the
workplace because of the various advantages it offers. However, there needs to be a social
media policy that covers the social media activities within the company so that the sane can
be used for the purpose of creating better public relations and for advertising the company’s
products.