While the benefits of social media are great, there also are risks—particularly as employees have access to the same tools and audience as the company.

As with so many things having to do with technology, social media is evolving so fast that businesses are scrambling to not only grasp its full potential, but also understand the risks and to come up with a consensus on best practices for its use.

The casual way in which many employees share their personal lives online can give a business owner nightmares. After all, TMI—“Too Much Information”—is one thing when it comes to an employee’s social life, it’s quite another when it involves company business. Leaders can’t afford to ignore the potential problems.

More Questions Than Answers

What are appropriate guidelines for what company information employees can share online? What liability is the company exposed to from employee posts that flow through the company’s server? How does a company protect its reputation from offensive postings by an employee on a personal account? Even large corporations are just now exploring answers to these questions.

“It’s an ongoing management problem,” said Valerie Jennings, CEO and founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing in Kansas City. “Social media has really cost a lot of organizations time, energy and money on so many different levels. It’s a blessing to have these resources, but the risks have to be managed or they can really hurt the brand.”

So, what are small businesses to do? Should they bar employees from any mention of the company on social media? Or, allow employees free rein and hope for the best? Or, do best practices lie somewhere in between?

“Don’t focus solely on social media,” said David Kight, chair of the labor and employment practice group at Spencer Fane Britt and Browne, LLP in Kansas City. “Policies need to be in place no matter what—policies that relate to keeping confidential information confidential and policies that deal with when it’s appropriate to be using social media or the Internet during the work day.”

He notes that some provisions of such a policy are difficult in practice to enforce, such as a rule prohibiting the use of social media during the workday. Similar to problems with surfing the Web while employees should be working, social media use can be hard to monitor and stop.

Kight said an increasing number of employers seem to be concerned with the consequences of an employee doing something on social media that is improper, such as posting something offensive or discriminatory, divulging confidential information and the like.

“I think the big issue is to let your employees know to be smart and encourage them to remember that just because they’re on Facebook or LinkedIn doesn’t mean the company’s policies don’t apply to them,” said Kight. “I think a lot of employers, if they can remind their employees of that, can avoid a lot of problems.”

Common Sense Approach

According to Jennings, one of the biggest concerns is employees haphazardly posting messages about the company on personal or company accounts. Even if well intentioned, such postings can be counterproductive and, if unchecked, can quickly get out of hand. For that reason, many companies have policies that expressly forbid employees, except a specially designated team, from making any mention of the company anywhere on the Internet.

Indigo Wild, a Kansas City company that makes natural products for the body and home, has no paid advertising or public relations, and so has come to rely heavily on social media for marketing. According to founder Emily Voth, she and two other full-time employees do most of the social media posting. Because of this, compromising the brand image online is not a concern for her.

While Indigo Wild has guidelines for the style of its social media posts (e.g., nothing negative, no use of the words “I” or “we,” no mention of politics or religion), the company has no real rules governing employee behavior online.

“We’re pretty loose,” Voth said of the spontaneous, free-wheeling corporate culture of her business. She is not concerned about what any of her 10 full-time and 25 part-time employees post on their personal accounts.

“I feel that if someone doesn’t know what to put on their personal page in association with work, they shouldn’t be working here,” she said. “I think our employees are savvy enough not to pull that kind of stuff.”

Voth’s social media policy is similar to that of The New York Times. “We don’t really have any social media guidelines,” Times social media editor Liz Heron told the audience at the BBC Social Media Summit last May. “We basically just tell people to use common sense and don’t be stupid.”

That policy (or lack of a policy) may work for Indigo Wild and The New York Times, but it’s not something that Daren Fristoe, president of The Fristoe Group, a provider of outsourced human resource services in Lee’s Summit, recommends to his clients. He has seen too many instances where employees post highly negative things about their boss or co-workers on social media sites, sometimes on accounts that identify them as employees of that company.

Tighter Reins

The sad fact is, Fristoe said, sometimes employees do really inappropriate and unprofessional things online and companies need to be prepared. Because this technology is relatively new in the workplace, employment-related case law regarding social media is rare.

“Companies need to identify the areas of exposure related to social media usage and their employees, and create some form of policy, communicate that policy and reinforce it so that they can act,” Fristoe said. “The lack of that policy simply leaves the door open.”

The social media policy adopted by EAG, an eight-person advertising agency in the Crossroads Arts District, is only one page of a larger employee handbook. It addresses the fact that, given the nature of social media, there is no clear line between an employee’s work life and personal life, and that consequences should be expected from irresponsible social media posts that impact the company, even if done after hours and on a personal computer.

“Basically, our policy says that behaviors that were unacceptable before social media are still unacceptable today,” said Paul Weber, EAG’s president. “You just need to be aware of what those things are.”

Mail Print already required employees to sign confidentiality agreements on an annual basis. CEO Gina Danner said they added a few paragraphs covering social media to the company’s electronics communication policy. The whole thing serves as a reminder that confidentiality and appropriate communications includes conversations on social media.

Harnessing the Power

As social media becomes more pervasive—Twitter has 200 million users, Facebook has more than 500 million and YouTube had 700 million playbacks in 2010—many business leaders worry about the dangers posed by employee interaction on social media. And, admittedly, those dangers are real.

“There are so many instances of companies that have made gaffes in the social space and hurt their brand,” said Paul Evans, president of Evans Media Group in Overland Park. “Bad news travels very quickly in the social space and spreads faster than anything we’ve ever seen.”

As with most business challenges, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to managing the risks associated with social media. Much depends on the size of the company, the nature of the work and the corporate culture. One thing is certain, however, technology in all its manifestations will always need constant, watchful monitoring.

David Conrads is a freelance writer in Kansas City. (913) 901-0205 // This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it