Using Social Media Professionally
There is no doubt that social media is now pervasively used for building professional learning networks. Besides LinkedIn, the social media network exclusive for professional purposes, there is a dramatically growing number of professional discussions and idea exchanges on Facebook and Twitter, which are commonly used for personal purposes. Accordingly, the distinction between private and professional uses is, though crucial, becoming fuzzy.
In the article, Stott (2015) indicated that as the social media was increasingly used for networking, information sharing, and professional development in the nursing field, the inappropriate use of social media had become more common.
In many cases, nurses used social media at work to pursue personal relationships, give unpleasant remarks, or even access adult content. He posited that very limited guidance on professional use of social media in particular and online professionalism in general was provided to the nurses, thus integrating specific guidance on professional social media use to the nursing code of conduct was essential. The guidance was a reminder for the nurse to use all forms of online communication including social media in a responsible manner as their unprofessional behaviors on social media may put their career at risk.
The idea of embedding guidance on social media use to conduct code can be applied to all profession. As social media can be seen as an invention of digital age, employers should not expect that employees are aware of the risk and know how to use social media professionally. The employers should always provide formal briefing or training for newly hired employees on how to use social media at work to prevent unexpected consequences or damages due to the misuse of social media.
The U.S. State Department is a good example of organization who incorporates social media use to the training program for new employees. During the orientation week, the employees are required to take the online training called “Social Media, Department of State, and You” which provides an overview of how social media is used by State Department to promote U.S. interests in foreign countries and what the employees should and should not do on social media sites.
Specifically, all employees are encouraged to create a separate social media account for professional purposes. In addition, in personal accounts, employees are asked to post the disclaimer stating the posts express employees’ personal opinions and the State Department is not associated to or responsible for these posts. Most importantly, the employees are encouraged to avoid posting sensitive or controversial issues that might be harmful to the diplomatic relation between the U.S. and the host country. When it comes to security issues, pictures taken inside the work building are not allowed to publish on social media.
As social media was a big part of my job in the Public Affairs Section, I had a lot more comprehensive training on using social media personally and professionally. I was highly aware of the importance of online professionalism when I administered the Facebook pages of the Consulate and the Consul General. Every post on these pages had to go through a thorough planning, creating, and reviewing process with the photos and text carefully considered and chosen.
The article only suggested creating the guidance for social media use as a way to prevent employees’ inappropriate or unprofessional behaviors, but the author did not mention any forms of monitoring to ensure that employees abide by the organization regulations on social media use. From my experience, I believe that training is insufficient as in my last job I saw that misbehaviors still happened very frequently even though all the employees were provided the social media training. Therefore, my question is what employers can do to supervise employees’ use of social media without violating employees’ privacy.
Reference:
Stott, I. (2015). Social media in the workplace: Approach with caution. Nursing & Residential Care, 17 (9), 519-521. Retrieved from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/108920174/social-media-workplace-approach-caution
