Social media policy considerations for employee manuals are a growing concern for employers. Personal internet use costs American corporations nearly $200 billion per year. Employees spend approximately 25 percent of their work days surfing the internet with 93 percent admitting to using their employer’s internet access for both personal and business reasons. These costs alone would justify creating comprehensive social media policies for inclusion in your employee handbooks, but there are legal considerations as well. How do you protect your interests and create an effective social media policy?

In a BLR webinar titled “Social Media Policies: What Every Company Should Have in their Handbooks to Avoid Potential Legal Issues,” Jeffrey Schultz and John Vering outlined some guidance to help companies create effective social media policies for inclusion in their employee manuals. Schultz and Vering confirmed: “we recommend that you have an updated social media policy. If you don’t have a policy, you should draft one. If you have one, you should look at it to see if it’s up-to-date.”

3 Key Questions to Ask Before Crafting Social Media Policies in Employee Manuals

In drafting a social media policy, Schultz noted that “social media policies are not one-size-fits-all . . . it’s a very fact-intensive analysis, depending on a number of things.”

A company should ask three simple questions:

1. What does the company want to accomplish through the use of social media? In other words— what are your business goals and marketing objectives you hope to achieve? You will need to keep these goals in mind when limiting social media use.
2. What does the company hope to accomplish with your social media policy? Typically, companies hope to limit liability, control your message, and protect competitively sensitive or confidential information. What is your need?
3. Will the social media policy be consistent with its other corporate policies, guidelines, and overall culture? Consider your other policies in your employee manuals or in your policy and procedure manuals. What about employment agreements? Are you in compliance with applicable government or industry regulations? Remember to keep your social media policy consistent with your corporate culture as well.

In a related article, Schultz and Vering discuss key elements to consider when drafting a social media policy.

For more information on social media policies for employee manuals, order the webinar recording. To register for a future webinar, visit http://catalog.blr.com/audio.

Attorney John Vering leads the Employment and Labor Law practice group of Armstrong Teasdale. A strong litigator, he works with both local and national organizations in a wide array of industries on a wide variety of employment lawsuits and business disputes.

Attorney Jeff Schultz is a business and commercial litigator with Armstrong Teasdale and is co-chair of the Social Media Practice Group. Much of his practice focuses on counseling individuals and organizations through complex disputes involving the misappropriation of trade secrets, computer tampering, non-disclosure agreements, non-compete agreements, commercial contracts, and social networking law.