University Name, MNG81001: Social Media Policy Case Study Analysis

This case study analyzes the significance of social media policies in the workplace, using the scenario of Sunshine 100, a company specializing in responsible foods. The assignment, written as a memo from the Director of Social Media, Jane Wilson, to management, addresses the lack of a social media policy and its consequences following an incident related to the 'KidsEats' campaign. The analysis covers the comparative advantages and disadvantages of social media versus traditional communication, the impact of employee social media behavior on company reputation, and the essential coverage areas for a comprehensive social media policy. The document proposes a detailed communication strategy, including timelines and audience engagement, to ensure employees understand and adhere to the new policies. The assignment emphasizes the need for clear guidelines, professional usage, and separation of personal and professional social media accounts to protect the company's image and future endeavors, particularly its expansion into the Chinese market. The solution includes references to academic sources supporting the arguments presented.

Running Head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Topic- Importance of social media policies in workplaces
Case study analysis: Sunshine 100
Student name
University name
Author notes

2BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
To: The Management, Sunshine 100
From: Jane Wilson, Director of Social Media
Date: 23rd March 2019
Subject: Recommendations to strengthen social media policy development in Sunshine 100
Dear all,
In response to the recent ‘KidsEats’ campaign incident reflecting on lack of social media policy
in our Organisation, I would like to mention and recommend some key workplace policies in
regard to social media usage. The major focus areas will include,
1. Importance of right tools and technologies for social media usage at workplaces and a
comparative study of social media tools and traditional communication tools.
2. Impacts of an employee’s social media comments and behavioural expression on ultimate
image and reputation of an organisation.
3. Various coverages of social media interaction under social media policy coverage and
4. Development of a communication strategy for effective social media policy
communication to all employees and staffs.
Comparative study of challenges posed by social media and traditional communication
Social media is surely one of the most innovative benefits of technological upgradation
but it possesses a number of risks too. Social media has increased both vulnerability and
insecurity of business information to a considerable extent (Bucher, Fieseler and Suphan 2013).
It has improved networking on one hand but on the other have lowered the ethical and moral
responsibility of the employees. Organizational productivity has decreased to a considerable
extent due to increased exposure to social media in workplaces (Cardon and Marshall 2015).
Smart technology implementation has increased superficiality of knowledge experiences and as a
result risk consequence have increased manifold. Social media has higher scope of uplifting as
well as ruining the image and reputation of an organization in no time (De Choudhury and

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Counts 2013). Social media tools like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are
both cost-efficient and quick but have higher risk of data discrepancy and data misuse (Leonardi,
Huysman and Steinfield 2013). On the other and traditional communication is also not free from
risk and challenges. The major challenge faced is to remain dynamic with the rapid pace of
globalization. Negative impact of word of mouth is far reaching as resulting grapevine can affect
the whole work culture to a great extent (Thomas and Akdere 2013). It has lack of community
support and interaction as a result a gap is created in product promotion and advertisement. Both
time and cost involvement are high. Also, at times, reaching the target audience is not possible in
the given time frame and the main objectives of the organization remains unachievable. Both
face to face verbal and non-verbal communication channel have same problems as mentioned
above.
Impacts of employee’s social media behaviour and comments on reputation of the organization
Now, after the ‘KidsEats’ incident, we all can well understand the impact of employee’s
social media comments and behavioral outcomes on company reputation and image. The whole
reputation of the company, its international expansion scope, future progress all have come under
scrutiny overnight. The depth of impact is well felt today as one single Facebook post by one of
our staffs have ruined the whole value of our campaign of promoting healthy food alternative.
And in this case the role of media cannot be neglected. With social media integration media have
also become stronger and one small misuse from our side will be the reason of our failure. In this
regard I would like to mention that the increased looseness of social media usage in workplace in
Sunshine 100 has been the major reason of this incident. May be the staff posted it casually and
his intension was right as he mentioned that ‘…. junk food everywhere’ where he wanted to
reflect on the ill-effects of the same. But his timing and positioning as not right and it resulted in
the dire consequences to be faced by the organization. Hope not but it will have far-reaching
impacts on our Baby food launch in China as well. In this regard, employees need to be made
aware of the impacts social media could cause to their own job reputations as well as on the
organizational reputation at large (Vaast and Kaganer 2013). Employees need to abide by a set of
rules and regulations in regard to social media usage and they need to know about their own
roles and responsibilities in maintaining the reputation of the organization they work with.

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Social media policy coverage areas
It is worth mentioning here, that our organization has no explicit social media usage policy
and there is only an employee handbook which provides some guidelines to social media usage.
Some important points considered are positive attitude towards job, employees should be polite
and courteous in their social media postings keeping in mind the reputation of the organisation,
posts made on behalf of Sunshine 100 need to be consistent with the marketing and public
relation objectives and practices of the organisation, respect copyright while posting online
contents and should avoid or else limit revealing personal information in social media. But these
guidelines are not enough and a more robust policy frame development is required to restrict
such incidents in near future. Some considerations that need to be included in the new policy
implementation are,
 A well written company code of conduct and policy guidelines to employees.
 Employees should not publish any kind of posts, information or publishing that are not
public without prior permission from upper management.
 Social media usage in workplaces should be strictly professional and will be limited to
business purposes only, personalized social media usage during work hours could result
in disciplinary actions (Abdullah and Marican 2017).
 It any content is published or posted after work hours but have subject associated with
organizations then a disclaimer should be used which will clear that the posts are his
own and has no linkage to company strategies and opinions.
 Last but not the least, personal social media accounts should not be mixed with
professional social media accounts and must be separated (Zhang and Venkatesh 2013).
Communication strategy development

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I hope this information will help in developing a robust and clear social media policy in Sunshine
100. A seven-day time frame is sufficient to develop the strategies and it will be announced and
levied from 1st April itself. Hope, all management will support this decision-making and will take
necessary action measures to deal with the hardships of the recent incident.
Thanking you
Yours Sincerely,
Jane Wilson
Director of Social Media
Sunshine 100
1st April 2019Timing
All employees and staffs
.Audience
CEO, Paul MorganSender
Making all aware of the new social media policies of
Sunshine 100Key message
All employees have understood them well and will
abide by them holisticallyDesired outcome
A formal meeting and e-mail channel for sending new
policy brochure to all employeesMedium
Social media in workplaces should be strictly
professional and use of mobile phone will be restricted
during work hours.
Material
Messages should be sent when required and no social
chats during office hours. interaction among
department heads and team members need to be
improved.
Frequency

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References
Abdullah, A. and Marican, S., 2017. Relationship between leadership perception and
engagement in workplace deviant behavior. The Malaysian Journal of Social
Administration, 11(1), pp.131-150.
Bucher, E., Fieseler, C. and Suphan, A., 2013. The stress potential of social media in the
workplace. Information, Communication & Society, 16(10), pp.1639-1667.
Cardon, P.W. and Marshall, B., 2015. The hype and reality of social media use for work
collaboration and team communication. International Journal of Business
Communication, 52(3), pp.273-293.
De Choudhury, M. and Counts, S., 2013, February. Understanding affect in the workplace via
social media. In Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative
work (pp. 303-316). ACM.
Leonardi, P.M., Huysman, M. and Steinfield, C., 2013. Enterprise social media: Definition,
history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), pp.1-19.
Thomas, K.J. and Akdere, M., 2013. Social media as collaborative media in workplace
learning. Human Resource Development Review, 12(3), pp.329-344.
Vaast, E. and Kaganer, E., 2013. Social media affordances and governance in the workplace: An
examination of organizational policies. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 19(1),
pp.78-101.
Zhang, X. and Venkatesh, V., 2013. Explaining employee job performance: The role of online
and offline workplace communication networks. Mis Quarterly, pp.695-722.