There’s an article here that focuses on how employees affect brand reputation, but it focuses on “front line” employees. The problem with social media is, EVERYONE is on the front line. I think organizations have their work cut out for them, not only designing strong social media policies, but also deciding degrees of misconduct: which honest mistakes deserve reprimand, which deserve suspension, and which weren’t really honest and deserve termination. Many shades of gray.

And I think really this goes back to cultivating strong relationships with the community. With reporters, with citizens, with business owners. People who trust their police will be more forgiving of the honest mistakes (if they are handled the right way), they’ll be more forgiving of the organization that works to repair damage done by truly bad misconduct. But that’s less a matter of social media than it is of organizational culture. Eustis PD is a great example of that. They had a strong community relationship before they started using Facebook and Twitter. Ultimately that’s really why the Taser incident didn’t blow up in their faces, I think.

One of the particularly useful insights was the possibility some “people don’t even get that certain conduct (like sexting) is shameful—because they don’t see it that way for themselves—they’re not going to think about professionalism in the same way their supervisors are.” It is too easy to assume that everybody on the force “knows” what’s proper and what’s improper conduct. It can get even hairier with off-duty conduct.

One of the areas I have seen the hazard of the assumptions about understanding of conduct norms is with information handling & disclosure. I’ve run into bit variations on this in workplaces with sharing anecdotes of workplace discussions and events outside of work. Some people stay mum, holding to what happens at work, stays at work. Others might share a bit with spouse. Still others may see everything in their life as far game for tweets and postings. A person whos disclosing, maybe overdisclosing, his own life can fail to see why some other people may feel even a small disclosure about them to be improper. (By the way, ever disclosing positive info about others might not always be appreciated. Goes back to old concept about “talebearing” and gossip.)
Jonathan Abolins´s last blog ..Getting back to the blog after a summer hiatus