e-liz

Michael Hyatt wrote this fantastically bold and controversial post last week, outlining the Five Reasons Why Your Company Doesn’t Need a Social Media Policy. I loved it. Not only because Hyatt used my new favorite expression, “a solution in search of a problem,” to describe most corporate social media policies, but because his thesis is right on: the spirit of any social media policy is – or SHOULD be – baked directly into the way you do business. All of things you do and do not want your employees to do online can and should be accounted for in the way you choose those employees, the values you impart to them, and the mechanisms through which you ensure that only those employees who uphold your values get to remain employees.

So why is it that in my business, clients are always asking us to help them develop social media policies, and we’re rarely (if ever) telling them, “No, you don’t need one”?

Here are two good reasons why your company might need a social media policy:

Your Boss Really, Really Wants a Policy
Despite some well known examples of culture change starting from the top, it’s a rare company whose online engagement is actually driven by the CEO. More often, social media initiatives are conceived and executed by people in the middle of a company – a particular breed of change managers Amber Naslund recently called “constructive heretics.” Often, a so-called constructive heretic will find him or herself working for people who love policies… and who need policies in order to feel safe, secure, and in control.

Here’s the truth: you’re probably going to have an easier time writing a policy than convincing all your top executives that they have major psychological problems and need to view the world differently. Just write it, and then get on with the real work.

Your Employees Really, Really Need a Policy
Some of your employees are not great. There are different cultural factions in your organization, perhaps at odds with one another. There are weaknesses or gaps in your hiring practices or your training programs, and you haven’t fully understood or addressed them yet. Maybe you have big dreams about rehabilitating your entire business and becoming a truly great company that functions optimally from top to bottom. Maybe you even have plans in place to make those changes happen. For the majority of companies over a certain size, some or all of these things are the case.

Meanwhile, though, your employees are using social networks, and they’re using them in a way that makes the company look bad, makes it harder to do your job, or undermines the big changes you’re attempting… or all of the above. Resist the urge to give up here. Keep addressing your underlying business problems, by all means, but put a policy in place to stop the bleeding in the meantime! There’s no shame in it.

Hopefully someday, you won’t need a social media policy anymore. But don’t let the fact that you shouldn’t need one keep you from acknowledging the fact that you do.