According to the study, “An Examination of How Social Media Is Embedded in Business Strategy and Operations” published by Society for Human Resource Management, 40% of organizations have a formal social media policy and more than half (56%) of the policies include verbiage about the organization’s right to monitor social media usage among employees.
“Right now, HR is often the go-to department for creating and enforcing social media policies,” said Mark J. Schmit, Ph.D., SPHR, vice president of research at SHRM. “As social media becomes more defined in business beyond marketing activities, HR’s role will continue to grow and evolve as well.”
Other social media policy components include a code of conduct for employee use of social networking for professional purposes (68%), a code of conduct for employee use of social networking for personal purposes (66%), and guidelines for social media communications (55%).
The survey also found other interesting data points:
- Only 28% of organizations have a comprehensive social media strategy. Larger organizations and those with multinational locations are more likely to have a social media strategy than smaller employers and those with U.S.-based operations.
- 43% of organizations rely on their HR departments to create the social media policy and 44% say that HR also enforces these policies.
- 17% of organizations report that Information Technology, 14% for HR and 14% management lead social media within their organizations.
- 39% of respondents monitor their employees social media use on company-owned computers and handheld devices.
- 33% with a social media policy have disciplined an employee who violated the social media policy in 2011.
- 21% use social analytics or reporting tools to measure ROI for their social media efforts.
As social business transformation becomes more relevant and practiced in today’s business climate, organizations need to think more strategically about governance, employee behavior, trust and the technology that ties it all together. Not an easy task.
