Ethics and Social Media: Where Should You Draw The Line?
More people than ever are logging onto social networks at their place of employment. The National Business Ethics Survey of Social Networkers found that three out of four social networkers spend time on these platforms while at work, and 28% spend an hour or more on social networks each day.2 This increases the potential for an ethical lapse in judgment. Ethics is defined as “rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad”3. We can look at two sides of the ethical social media argument: 1.) there are those who may choose to air their company’s laundry on a social media site, or discuss co-workers, customers, and/or clients, and 2.) there is the strong potential for promoting business and creating a strong workplace culture through social media. So, how should business owners handle this new wave of social media in the workplace? Should they find more ways to prevent employees from engaging in social media? Are there ways for businesses to outline strategies that will address issues and prevent calamities?
Navigating through the new and changing world of social media can be tricky; educating ourselves on the issue at hand is an excellent beginning.
Social media in the workplace can have a “bad” side. Social media can highlight poor ethics within a business. Once those problems are in writing, they stay on the world wide web forever.
Having a few drinks with coworkers after hours is considered ethically acceptable. Having those same drinks in the workplace, caught on film, and uploaded to Facebook--very damaging to your career and the company you are employed with. Tweeting-- “Having a bad day at work.” is considered ok. Tweeting-- “My boss would not know a good business deal if it bit him in the butt.” Not so good.
Ethics are not always so black and white. There are lots of shades of grey and “Social Networkers are more likely to believe that questionable behaviors are acceptable.”5 When asked a series of ethical questions, those who are active social networkers are far more likely to be Ok with questionable grey areas than those workers who do not participate in social media. For example, when asked if it is considered ok to buy personal items with a company credit card as long as you pay it back, active social media users responded 42% in favor while other US workers only responded 8% in favor.
On the other hand, incorporating good judgement when using social media in the workplace is an important and vital tool for a company and its employees. “Companies that have not incorporated behavior expectations into their employee handbooks should make that a top priority.”6 While it is true that employees can take advantage of policies and spend way too much time on facebook or twitter during work hours, putting policies in place that clearly spell out behavior expectations can help to improve workplace culture. “If you can’t beat them, leverage them.”7 states Ethics Resource Center President Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D. She goes on to say that social networkers “...are more likely to be responsive if you’re making use of social networks to address company culture and employee concerns.”8
With technology constantly changing, social media is an important component in the workplace - Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are used to help increase brand awareness - in fact, 94% of all businesses with a marketing department use social media. The benefits are many for businesses and customers alike. Most importantly, social media is very inexpensive; it allows customers to interact more directly, and it gets the product out there quickly!9 A company can effectively manage social media use in the workplace by developing a “good” policy consisting of ethical and legal expectations that employees are expected to follow, creating a stronger workforce culture.
A publication by Group 4
I am not surprised when someone gets caught up in a grey area and gets in trouble with Social Media, because those are judgement calls that we each use our own experiences, perspectives and personal ethics to judge, it is the blatant mistakes that shock me. I just want to grab the person and say "What the **** were you thinking?!?"
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