Tag Archives: Social Media
Apple’s Leaked Social Media Policies Show Areas to Improve by Frazer McKenzie
Apple’s Leaked Social Media Policies Show Areas to Improve
Frazer McKenzie
Last week Apple’s internal employee social media policy was leaked and published by 9to5mac. The policy outlines exactly how an employee must conduct themselves on social media and highlights the blurring of lines between public and private behaviour online.
“The lines between public and private, and personal and professional are blurred in online social networks. Respect your audience and your co-workers. This includes not only the obvious (no ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc.) but also topics that may be considered offensive or inflammatory. In sum, use your best judgment…
“…In general, what you do on your own time is your business. However, activities that affect your job performance, the performance of other Apple employees, or Apple’s business interests are still covered by company policies and guidelines. This applies whether you engage in these activities in or outside of work, and whether or not you identify yourself as an Apple employee.”
Apple’s policy includes separate guidelines for social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. They cover confidentially, customer privacy and rumour commentary in depth; with distinct guidelines of conduct over email and media platforms.
A few interesting points that are relevant to internal social media include:
- Respect the privacy of your coworkers. Blogs, wikis, social networks and other tools should not be used for internal communications among fellow employees. It is fine for Apple employees to disagree, but please don’t use your external blog or other online social media to air your differences. Do not discuss your co-workers without their permission, and ask permission before posting their picture. By respecting your co- workers’ privacy you will be helping to maintain the professional work environment at Apple.
- Protect Apple’s confidential information. As an Apple employee you have an obligation to protect the confidential, proprietary and trade secret information of the company. This obligation is laid out in several places including the Intellectual Property Agreement you signed when hired and in Apple’s Confidential Information Policy. For example, do not discuss any Apple confidential information including your store’s financial or business performance, and the timing, pricing or design of Apple’s products. Also, do not post pictures of the inside of the Apple Store – including the back of house – as those are not generally made public. Finally, do not post or disclose the contents of any Apple policy. These documents are intended for the use of Apple employees, and not for public distribution.
- Don’t use your Apple email for personal use. Your Apple email address has been given to you for use at work. Therefore you should not use your Apple email address on your personal blog or when posting on social network sites. You have been given a free .mac/.me email address to use for non-work related emails. Please use that email or another personal email address for those types of communications.
For Apple and any other worldwide enterprise business, keeping tabs of all employees on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. is an impossible feat. In some cases, employees are caught and fired, but in many cases I’m sure it goes unmonitored. However this shouldn’t be the case internally. The policies above can be automatically monitored on all internal corporate sites as well as email so that guidelines can be enforced safeguarding both the business interests and employees.
Just Remember Who You Work For!! [Opinion]
Collaborating in the enterprise is a tricky business especially for those of us who are used to collaboration in our personal lives. I heard one story recently of an employee of a large technology company that posted an inappropriate joke to the corporate intranet – he was subsequently fired. Now if he had posted that same joke to his Facebook page, it might have raised a few brows, even got a few tasteless laughs, but his friends would have spoke to him the next day.
Questions that shaped the web experience [Opinion]
In preparation for an upcoming webinar, I started thinking about the questions that have helped shape how we view the web experience. Some of these are captured below.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Blog? [Opinion]
“Little blog, little blog, let write…
“Not by the rules of my social media policy…”
Okay so it might not be the best use of a fairy tale, but the point is still there. Many organisations are prohibiting the adoption of SharePoint 2010’s social media functions for fear of inappropriate or sensitive information being published accidently.
The worry for most businesses is that all the memos and guidelines in the world are only ever as effective as the number of individuals who actually adhere to them – or even remember they exist – when they go to publish or share information with internal / external stakeholders.
However if we really do have nothing to fear but fear itself, why does it still cause the kind of knee jerk reactions that amount to complete lockdown of a tool that should be an integral part of working collaboratively in the digital economy?
Think back to the third little pig. If you use a solution that is built into the publishing process, you are effectively building a house of bricks that will be strong enough to protect everyone against inadvertent leaking of sensitive information or inappropriate language use. No amount of huffing or puffing will breach these walls.
The benefits of building out a collaborative, social computing platform for an enterprise far outweigh the risks if, as with the third little pig’s house, the right foundations and materials are used in its construction.
Which Type of Content Personality do you have?
Answer these few simple questions to find out if your personality will lend itself to causing a company confidentiality leak.
1. Do you love social media?
2. Are you always talking about your company through social media (on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and on Forums)?
3. Are you trying to keep your company in the forefront of customers’ minds?
4. Have you ever used inappropriate language or misrepresented the brand when using social media?
If you’ve answered yes to any of these then you could be a ‘Four-Mouthed Social Media Monster!’
Next questions… If you are responsible for sharing documents with the entire company or sometimes with the public, answer these two questions:
1. Does any of the information you share have customer details within it? For example a National Insurance Number, date of birth or address
2. Can this information, with potentially sensitive customer information, be accidently published within your organisation?
If you answered yes to either of these then you could be a ‘Clueless Uploader!’
Moving on … If you are an executive assistant that manages calendars and information (i.e. confidential merger talks, reorganisation strategies, even potential layoffs) or publishes information for the executive team, answer yourself these two questions:
1. Are you able to recognise the sensitivity of some of that information?
2. Are you certain that the information cannot be accessible to the entire organisation?
If you answered no to either of these then you could be an ‘Executive Assistant with Slippery Fingers!’
Once you’ve identified problem personalities and characters, policies and education, awareness and enforcement are a few ways that can help eliminate these behaviors and stop information leakage in its tracks.
Read the full article.
Image Source: nyer.28
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