How easy is it to discover someone’s email address at a company? VERY easy. All you need is one person’s address. My old one was kevinj@…com. Now I know the format of all email addresses. Sure there will be some exceptions, but hey. Now all I need is an inside person. And if I am a union, I probably have the person and can get the names of everyone in the company.
Now, I don’t know the rules of unions (I have never worked with one) but I would assume if they really wanted to spread propaganda, they could do so pretty easily.
I received an email from Travis Smith (@travka) asking me what I thought of his company’s response to their action of ixnaying Twiter/Facebook as he wrote on his blog post. And it is… (drum roll, please…) REALLY, what is your excuse? No, I mean REALLY. (I am not trying to be sarcastic, but I mean it.) Not “what is the easy excuse you use because you aren’t sure of the real excuse.” Because you know you are going to have to face it and deal with it soon. VERY soon. The excuse is just a stall tactic. “I really don’t know how we are going to deal with this right now, so we will give you the reason we have always given and then bury our heads in the dirt, hoping all this will go away.”
We are going to have to face it. Now or later.
Travis’s response is spot on:
“Our own employees are using these means already. And we have no visibility into what is going on except through Google Alerts, which is truthfully inadequate alone. 2007 was the first year that there was more content creation than crawlers, servers, etc. could document and store. Facebook boasts for over 200 active million users! Surely many of our own employees are on this list, and Google does not Google Alert it. At first search without digging, I found 380 people on Facebook from my company (not a large company). A quick search on Myspace.com revealed 112 hits including job postings from their partnerships with job websites. Linkedin.com listed 190 employees.”
Ahhh. If I were a union, it would be SUPER easy to target these 380 people. Excuse destroyed.
And, again:
So our people are already using social media for “good” and for “bad.” Why not have a discussion board on our intranet for our employees only (i.e. they have to login through their employee #) where we have full visibility? Are we that afraid of our employees?
Travis, this is what I would do. Find their real excuse. That could be that, simply, they don’t know what to do and so they are stalling. Or it could be that one executive has a hang up. Or it could be that they think employees will waste good productive hours in this social stuff (or one of a bunch of other reasons we just covered in our webinar this week). Whatever it is, it is time to tackle it and use social media as an advantage rather than letting it be a detriment. Allow it to work for you, not against you.
Another thing I would say for those who make these decisions: Play out the scenario for them on the opposite end. Imagine that the unions do figure all this social media stuff out today – as policies stand – and they use it. How could/would they? What would it look like? What are the consequences? Given the current company policy, how far would it get before they figured out what was going on? Then, what are the repercussions and how would the company respond?
Then, after that frightening depiction, give them another scenario: The one where we use social media and take control, rather than letting it take control of the company. Then answer the same questions.
Also make sure that they understand that if it is on your side of the firewall, the unions will not have access to it. You will encourage people to use social media in a safe environment. That is what we have done for a homeschool group we are a part of, and it has worked beautifully.
All of that is discussion #1. You have to let them noodle on that for a while. Discussion #2 can introduce some example solutions of what you might be able to do.
Whatever you do, Travis, make it PERSONAL. DON”T talk in generalities. Apply everything you say to the company. If you use a case study, show it and follow it up with. “Given that, imagine a scenario in our company where…”
In the end, it is time to take control rather than letting it control.
(Update: Dave Wilkins and I just recorded a podcast today with this being the main subject. More great thoughts came out. Check out iTunes or the Podcast folder for when it comes out – which should be around next Tuesday.)
