Feedback from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube & Flickr

Today I received feedback from the presentation I gave back in October 2008 (!) on the presentation ‘Facebook, MySpace, YouTube & Flickr – managing and leveraging the business impact of social networking sites’.

Again going for that whole transparency thing.

Feedback was very good – technical content rating was a 4 (Very Good) and presentation material rating was a 4 (Very Good).

The average is suspiciously round so it makes me think that not many people completed the evaluation, but there you go.

The presentation is available in an earlier post, but here is the slideshare:

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Can employers tell us what we can do in our private, online social networking, lives?

If your employer tells you to ‘stop doing that, you’ll go blind’ online, do you have to stop doing it? 

Short answer:  yes, with a but. 

As I specialise in long answers though – see below.  Caveat – I’m not a lawyer.  This probably misses a ton of stuff cos I’ve shortened it from the original, much longer, draft.  This is just for discussion, comment, and thought provocation at the moment.  It also has far too many Battlestar Galactica references. 

At law it is generally well recognised that employees have several duties of care that they owe to their employer . There are three core duties of an employee to their employer that have a clear link to an employee’s online social networking activities:

  • to work with care and diligence,
  • to obey all lawful and reasonable orders, and
  • to act with good faith and fidelity.

There are essentially two types of employee: a standard employee (on a time-service contract) and a professional or staff employee (on a task-performance contract) . Professional and staff employees, and especially those employees with client-facing roles, are generally held to a higher standard, particularly where their actions may tarnish the employer’s image.

The employee has a positive duty to be efficient, and to avoid negligence in carrying out the work. In the context of online social networking, an employee might breach this duty where their use of such tools affected their efficiency (for example, through cyberslacking) or using a social networking tool in an inappropriate way (for example, to store client material or to carry on client conversations).

An employee must also obey the ‘lawful and reasonable’ orders of their employer, taking all reasonable steps to carry out the tasks promised under the contract of employment. Criminal acts outside of the workplace may prevent the employee from carrying out their duties, and thus breach this duty. So if you joined an illegal OSN, or advocated criminal behaviour in an OSN (use your imagination but it probably involves terrorism, nazis, or pavlova) it might be difficult to keep doing your fracking job (sorry – Battlestar Galactica reference).

It is likely though that the activity would need to be very much at odds with the employee’s role for summary dismissal or discipline to be justified.

Employees do have a duty to act with good faith and fidelity (see especially Blyth Chemicals Ltd v Bushnell 1933 ). Employees must not act in a manner that is in conflict with the interests of their employer.

As part of this duty of good faith and fidelity, the employee must not disclose information where disclosure of such private information (for example, profits and losses, customers, methods and techniques, etc) might help a competitor. It is likely, for instance, that posting a blog topic about business strategy, or the file notes from an internal meeting, would breach the duty. The duty operates to limit the employee’s ability to comment upon the business of the employer.

I was flabbergasted to find though that in the Cockatoo Docks Case (1946) it was found that an employer was justified in summarily dismissing an employee who wrote an article in a Labor Party newspaper that was critical of his employer. Try that one on today! Although it is not likely that this decision would be followed today, there are clear parallels to be drawn with online social networking activities.

The biggest issue for bloggers and Facebookers everywhere? Tarnishing corporate image.

For this duty to be beached there generally needs to be a relevant link with the employer such as a uniform. In Rose v Telstra Corporation 1998 it was acknowledged that employers ‘do not have an unfettered right to sit in judgment on the out of work behaviour of their employees. An employee is entitled to a private life.’

In the context of online social networking, presumably this connection would exist where the employee discloses the name of their current employer, or where the individual is in a senior client-facing role so as to be likely to be identified from their profile by a customer or prospective customer.

Some employers use things such as AWA’s etc to prevent, for example, a mining company employer stopping an employee joining a group that is protesting the mining company’s actions.

As a general principle, employers seeking to rely upon this power of control must set out their expectations very clearly, and ensure that the employee has consented to such contractual terms and that the expectations have been brought to the employee’s notice. In particular, the duty that an employee owes to act in good faith and with fidelity operates so that the employee should not ‘tarnish the business’s image’. The business’s expectations of its employees however must be very clear if the employer seeks to control their employees’ actions in private.

Personally I’m coming to the view that if it’s your private blog or Facebook, keep your employer’s name out of it – it’ll be sweeter for all that way.

Image from Flickr User Akbar SimonseSome Rights Reserved.

Friendly business

The business of accounting is business. Nobody said that, but it’s true nonetheless. Accounting is a profession that is definitely not about counting beans and wearing cardigans these days. CPA Australia members are core parts of every aspect of Australian business life, and so it is unsurprising that they are often among the first to identify new business issues as they arise and they are the ones given to advises for business improvement. For example, an issue noted recently is the potential impact that online social networking has upon business, and if you work from home in your business, you will need to learn how to take home pay for this. These websites allow friends to chat, share photographs, videos, and to discuss their work, lives, loves, wins and losses. At last count, there were more than six million Australians with profiles on Facebook and MySpace.

It is hardly a business issue that Australians have friends. Mateship is an Australian tradition, whether on the Kokoda track or on Facebook. The issue is that, as our world becomes more connected, it is increasingly difficult to separate personal lives from the world of ‘work’. Private actions now take place in very public places, with search engines voyeuristically distributing these activities for the entire world to see. Consider the recent YouTube ‘star’ who made negative comments about his employer. Once, those excruciating videos would have tormented only his unfortunate immediate family. YouTube provides the conduit to a whole new audience. Questionable tastes in humour cross organisational hierarchies though. There may be regrets for the partner of a consulting firm whose photo was posted online by a member of his staff, complete with Hitler moustache, swastika, and a Nazi salute. Not perhaps the look his professional profile is looking for.

Business owners must cross the generational and digital divide to become digital citizens so as not to be caught unawares, like the new owner of a motor dealership who was unaware of a web comment telling prospective customers to ‘avoid [the dealership] like the plague’. Three years on, that advice is still there and is prominently displayed when new customers Google the dealership. Twitter, a relatively new social networking service, allows users to post ‘microblogs’ from their mobile phone. Comments damaging a business’s online reputation are regularly made there – at one store, while still in the store, a customer ‘tweeted’ to her 789 ‘followers’ about the bad service received.

It is not all negative. Delight the digital citizens and your business will benefit. Robert Scoble, a particularly notorious blogger, mentioned a new book he was reading in a single tweet. With over 34,000 followers, it seems people took note, and the book quickly scaled the heights of the Amazon best seller list.

A generation has matured with the internet at their fingertips. This is a different world than the old world of football, kangaroos, meat pies and Holden cars. Your customers use the internet to inform their opinions. A business can take some steps to present itself in the best light possible, but actively manipulating information is unwise. The punishment for chicanery and ‘bad behaviour’ online is unpleasant, caustic and swift. Transparency and honesty are necessary in the digital world. The actions of an over-zealous employee can quickly ensure that a business is condemned to the scrapheap of irrelevance – consider the very public example of the software developer 2Clix who brought legal action against Whirlpool to have negative comments taken down from its forums.

Increasingly, ‘personal’ and ‘work’ lives collide. People need to be a little more circumspect when posting material online. Activities are often publicly available and can be seen by anyone – an audience perhaps not originally considered. Recruiters increasingly Google a candidate’s name to see what can be discovered. Personal information can be used for identity theft, and likewise corporate information on personal profiles can be used for ‘social engineering’ scams to defraud the business.

Is this an accounting issue? Probably not. Is it a business issue? Definitely, and accountants fundamentally are about business. CPA Congress in Melbourne this year includes a workshop to help people understand how they can use online social networking tools without causing great grief and how a business can respond to the business challenge of online social networking in a positive way. For those few people that are natural digital denizens, the workshop will discuss tactics they already know. For others, there will be hints and tips that will save them time, money and a poor online reputation.

The social networking phenomenon is here to stay and will continue to grow. Businesses must understand the impact of social networking upon the business, and monitor their ‘internet footprint’. Individuals must understand acceptable behaviour when living out their digital life. Simply ‘banning’ or ‘ignoring’ online social networking is rarely helpful. A sensible and informed approach is important, with an awareness of the potential risks and problems.

Social networking: sometimes, it’s about business.

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Social networking and recruitment of GenY?

I was asked over at the CPA Congress community:

Are you in the main, referring to Gen-Y/Z recruitment? Is it assumed that social networking sites are less relevant to the GenXers and boomers?

Also, i am of the view that it takes a multitude of factors to retain Gen-Y. Is it even possible to retain the bulk of Gen Y’s for a long stint?

If employers start allowing specific down-time for employees to surf the net etc, does this breed resentment in the workforce that do not utilise social networking websites? I.e. similar to employees that go for their hourly cigarette break.

My response?  The session on Thursday will be touching on recruitment and leveraging social networking sites.  The focus mostly tends to be on GenY, and leveraging with people you know (six degrees of Kevin Bacon if you know what you mean) to get ‘better’ staff. 

I think it is assumed that social networking sites are less relevant to GenXers and boomers.  There is a certain amount of truth to this in that they tend not to use it – but I think particularly LinkedIn does have impact amongst GenXers and some babyboomers.  I am really finding myself drawn to the Twitter community at the moment as it tends to be more active and has less ‘fluff’ and more potential for conversations.  But you can become addicted easily to it.

I understand incidentally that LinkedIn has become very active with people looking for new jobs in the current financial meltdown. 

I’m not an HR expert but those that I know would agree with you definitely that it takes a multitude of factors to retain GenY – just as it does for anyone.  I do ask myself whether you need to hoard every GenY you come across 🙂 – sometimes people moving on is constructive (i.e. functional turnover rather than dysfunctional turnover).  The way it seems to keep GenY is to offer them interesting roles, change and opportunities to learn.  As well as access to Facebook and plenty of money :).  The current economic crisis may change that. 

I might add that such humble approaches work for GenXers too :).  Regarding retaining ‘the bulk’ of GenY  – for some industries it is possible, but I’d ask whether it is actually a positive thing to do (i.e. keep the ‘bulk’ for a long stint).  I think we’ve always had this problem, but ‘churn and burn’ isn’t as effective, as there just aren’t as many GenY’s as there were GenXers when I graduated 17 years ago. 

Regarding specific down-time for employees to surf the net – I imagine it does breed resentment.  So, though, does asking people to work weekends and late nights at the expense of family life and friends – it’s quid pro quo I think on that one.  I wouldn’t advocate specific down-time – a Facebook-break – but I’m pretty old-fashioned. 

I would say that it is probably like getting a personal phone call at work – you don’t worry if it isn’t too much, but if a person spent hours on it to affect their effectiveness, you’d have to pull their horns in. 

Anyone else’s thoughts on this matter?  These are my grab-bag response to this issue – I may have missed something or get something wrong.  It’s been known to happen.

Thanks:  Micheal Axelsen

 

A ‘Guest Post’ for CPA Congress

A little while ago CPA Australia requested that I write a guest post for them for publication on the CPA Congress blog (cpacongress.wordpress.com), with the purpose of promoting my upcoming social networking workshop in Melbourne on social networking.  That post went live on Friday.  You can find the guest post at http://cpacongress.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/online-social-networking/, and I reproduce the post here for posterity, who I am sure will be so grateful they will come down to the retirement home to turn off Wheel of Fortune 2050AD

Looking forward to giving the workshop in Octobrer.

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It’s all fun until someone loses an eye. Then – it’s a sport.

In the same way, online social networking started out all in good fun. Somehow, online social networking moved away from the thumbs of tech-savvy Gen Y and into mainstream media. When someone lost their job though because of something they did online that their boss didn’t like, social networking became business. Nowadays it feels like there are tabloid journalists searching Facebook, MySpace and YouTube looking for a new angle and a new career to destroy – but that may perhaps be paranoid. Still, if you’re into muck-raking it’s more effective than going through someone’s wheelie-bin dumpster-diving for dirt – it’s cleaner, there are fewer pizza cartons involved, and it can all be done from the desk with a few mouse-clicks.

People do some silly things on online social networking websites. People also carry out private conversations in public forums. These activities can sometimes affect a business. All too frequently people are afflicted by a lack of common sense when they use online social networking websites like MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook (and at least 126 other social networking websites according to Wikipedia). When common sense flies out the window, the business can pay the price.

Ask the teacher who posted ‘lewd’ photos on Facebook the price of tabloid infamy (what, 12 year-olds don’t Google?). Ask the new owner of a motor dealership who did not know that a previous customer had written an online post advising prospective customers to ‘avoid them like the plague’ – three years on, it’s still there and showing up when new customers Google the dealership. Ask the owner of the store how she feels about the time a customer ‘twittered’ about bad service – before the customer had even left the store, the message was received by 789 of her ‘followers’. Then you could ask the shareholders of a company whose support technician was videoed asleep on a customer’s couch – and then the video posted to YouTube. Of course, that’s just plain funny, but it can’t be helping the brand strategy, can it?

There may also be some regrets for the partner of a consulting firm whose photo was posted online by a member of his staff – complete with his Hitler moustache, swastika, and doing a Nazi salute. Not a good look – but it’s still there, so maybe he doesn’t know about it! Or the married couple, a photograph of whom was uploaded to Photobucket – they were passionately kissing at the office Christmas party. Their main concern was that they were married, yes, just not to each other. I’m sure I don’t need to discuss the ‘Vlog Naked’ campaign. You get the drift.

Some of these firms know that these things have appeared online. Many businesses though do not know. In fact, when it comes to social networking, some businesses are slower on the uptake than a turkey at Thanksgiving.

What can businesses do about their online reputation?

There is hope! Those attending CPA Congress this year have the opportunity to participate in a workshop I am running called ‘Facebook, MySpace, YouTube & Flickr – managing and leveraging the business impact of social networking sites’ on Thursday 16 October. It’s not a great title, but at least it’s descriptive. This is a companion workshop to a forthcoming CPA Australia Information Technology & Management Centre of Excellence publication – a Guide to managing the business challenges that arise from online social networking.

This workshop provides an overview of social networking, discusses practical steps people can take to ensure their personal privacy, and walks through a process that businesses can use to develop policies and procedures that mitigate the negative impact of online social networking. The workshop also provides an insight into some of the potential business applications of online social networking. As a result, attendees at this workshop will be able to respond to the business challenge of social networking according to their requirements, and receive some practical pointers in helping their staff understand what they should and shouldn’t do online.

This workshop also promises to be a bit of fun – honestly, you never knew how much fun you could have with AS/NZS 4360:2004, did you? At the end of the workshop, participants will definitely have a firmer insight into online social networking and how to ensure that this new technology works for the business, not against it. Attending this workshop will equip you with the basic tools to use online social networking safely and to develop a policy approach that will limit the impact of online social networking upon the business.

Micheal Axelsen FCPA is Director of Applied Insight Pty Ltd and provides business systems consulting advice to clients. Micheal will be presenting ‘Facebook, MySpace, YouTube & Flickr – managing and leveraging the business impact of social networking sites’ at CPA Victoria Congress on 16th October 2008.