Why is it that social has created a whole new set of problems in the workplace? You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the employee with the  new found voice, the social employee. I think it’s an interesting dichotomy nowadays in which we have interviewed, poked and prodded this person before we have hired them, and yet we do not trust them to use social tools and platforms- Essentially, we have scared ourselves into thinking that every trusted employee that has been hire to be a part of the family and the culture is a social media risk.  Which begs a few questions:

How is it you hired someone you might not trust? Where is the disconnect? or better yet, why is there a disconnect? How can we ease the tension of the employer when it comes to the social employee?

Two words.

Manage Expectations.

The long form answer is that it starts with guidelines that include internal and external social policies, rules and guidelines that everyone can live by like what Cisco has done and it extends to adult like socially acceptable behavior. Social Media gives you the privledge of having conversations with anyone about anything but it does not give you the right to use it to run roughshod over the people that trust you and pay you to do a good job. At the end of the day it’s a two way street in which you both have to meet at the intersection of expectations and understand what is expected of each other.

Need more examples of social media policies and guidelines? Here’s a database with 174 examples.