With SharePoint 2010 on the horizon and increasing waves of “millenials” joing the workforce, we’re finding customers more and more concerned about how to approach governance around social networking media. They know they need to get on top of this, but aren’t sure how to do it while maintaining control over corporate resources.
I recently came across a couple of resources that provide a really good starting point:
This is an area where even within MCS we are just starting to formulate guidance for enterprise customers, and it’s not because we’re necessarily behind the curve, but that it is a very subjective and complex issue: It depends heavily on the culture of the organization and its political will to open up traditionally locked-down lines of communication.
Case-in-point: I was engaged on a project for a large customer last year who was wanting to introduce social networking where an experienced partner was brought in to help develop and structure their efforts. They recommended an approach that seems to run contrary to common sense, but is in fact the exact right thing to do:
- Develop and publish a policy that advises employees the rules of engagement on social media, ie. it’s a communication medium like any other, you are responsible for what you post, think about what you’re writing, there are penalties for breaching existing codes of conduct online, etc.
- Start out with all the social networking spigots turned “on”
- Observe how employees interact with the system; mediate conflicts quickly.
- Begin to turn off the spigots that aren’t being used or are causing problems.
Think of the “spigots” as features – blogs, wikis, discussion threads, MySites, corporate Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.
A really sensible approach when you think about it.
Other resources:
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