Between Hope and Fear: Developing Social Media Guidelines

Purpose: We examine employers’ policy with regard to employees’ social media use. Specifically, we examine the extent to which employers allow the use of social media in the workplace, what opportunities can be related to employees’ social media use and how social media guidelines are implemented within organizations. Design/methodology/approach: In-depth interviews were conducted with HR and communication managers of 16 European companies from different sectors and of varying size. Findings: Some organizations believe that social media should be accessible to employees while others ban them from the workplace. Most respondents believe that organizations can benefit from employees sharing work-related content with their own network. However, they encourage the sharing and retweeting of official corporate messages rather than employees developing their own messages. This fear regarding employees’ messages on social media is reflected in the broad adoption of social media guidelines.status: publishe