Social Media - do you have a policy?

Social media is everywhere and many schools are now regularly using it to communicate with stakeholders for a variety of reasons. This is why it is important that schools consider implementing a policy to help ensure employees are aware as to how social media should be used and to set the standard of behaviour expected.

But what should a policy contain? Ideally, it should include the following:

• Clear reference to the separation between business and private use.
• Limited private use in the workplace permitted? Is it clear what this means in practice?
• Reputation and brand management including who is able to comment on behalf of the Trust and the types of comments that they are committed to make, and on what platforms. If an individual is permitted to comment on behalf of the Trust, it is worth also considering whether their personal messages are also monitored.
• How negative comments and defamation by employees about other staff, the business, its suppliers or other stakeholders will be handled, including reference to the Trust’s disciplinary policy.
• How Trust devices can be used for personal communication and/or social media, if at all, and whether personal devices should be used for official social media communications on behalf of the Trust.
• How social media use by employees will be monitored.
• How employee, client and other business contact information will be protected.

Any limitations on the use of social media should not go beyond what is reasonable. An example of a policy that is too stringent might include potentially infringing the human rights of the employee or impinging on the freedom for employees to report illegal activity.

The policy should also indicate which platforms are acceptable to be used by employees and which Trust or school ones will publish media. It may also be useful from time to time to do a search to see if any rogue accounts have been created in either the school or Trust’s name which have not been authorised. Posts made by these accounts may cause reputational damage if mis-used.

Keeping and maintaining a record of when employees read the policy would also be useful to ensure it has been acknowledged.

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