In an article today in The Australian it has been revealed that the Commonwealth Bank as part of it's social media policy has directed it's staff to point out to their managers "inappropriate or disparaging content and information stored or posted by others" it goes onto say, according to The Oz, that this includes posts from their friends. If they don't they risk dismissal. This is hysterical. CBA you're a bank! It's perfectly natural for you to be universally hated. Seriously, get over it. Not to mention that you raised mortgage interest rates by nearly double the official rate rise last year and then you announced a $3.35 billion profit yesterday. Of course people are going to stick the virtual boot in but to demand that your employees report any public kicking will give them little time to do anything else.
Why only "Social Media"?
A quick search of Google reveals many instances of what the CBA might regard as "inappropriate or disparaging content" so why is the policy only directed to "social media" sites?
When I interviewed David Meerman Scott yesterday he explained the approach of IBM to social media. They have over 400,000 employees world wide and half of them participate in social media. Apparently they have a policy of treating their employees like grownups and social computing is seen as something to embrace rather than fear. They actively encourage participation by their employees in social media. From IBM's Social Media Guidelines: "IBM is increasingly exploring how online discourse through social computing can empower IBMers as global professionals, innovators and citizens."
Is it unfair though to ask the CBA to look to IBM as an example? After all they are a technology company. The Internet runs on a lot of their stuff. CBA employees on the other hand, I would imagine would not have much time online. They are a bank after all and I would hope they'd be paranoid about security. Although one tweeter says they recently got access to Facebook.
I can't ever remember being a customer of the CBA so I have no axe to grind but whoever came up with this social media policy doesn't seem to have a good grasp on reality. The National Australia Bank on the other hand have come a long way in 3 years. Back in 2008 they were advised by their PR company that comment spamming was a good idea. I was very vocal at the time in publicly ridiculing them for the practice as were others. Their response on Twitter these days is very fast compared to the CBA who is not on Twitter at all from what I can tell. Today when I mentioned the NAB in a tweet in reference to the @dmscott interview they responded immediately. "@jimboot We really encourage our people to join in social media conversations. DM if you want to know more about our guidelines. ^HK" . Good for them! (I do bank with them)
It's a big job
The CBA has in excess of 44,000 employees. Let's just say on average they have 3 friends each (they work for a bank remember). That's a lot of policing to do. So don't be surprised if next time when you go into a CBA branch it's hard to get service because if the staff are doing their job properly according to to their SM policy, they'll be busy reporting negative comments to their managers.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The biggest takeaway for me from the OH conversation is that clearly there wasn’t a demand from CBA to monitor friends/mentions etc. There was no expectation for this person to be a reputation manager, they were just enjoying the new-found access to FB.
If anyone would like to compare social media policies and see how many other clauses like this are included here is a great resource: http://socialmediatoday.com/ralphpaglia/141903/social-media-employee-policy-examples-over-100-companies-and-organizations
Personally I feel this is just one of those things that seem harsh if you expect drastic action to be taken against those in breach of the policy but it’s more a way of triggering employees to be proactive for the good of the business. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that this was not intended to be so overzealous, perhaps the choice of words is in line with other policies
Thanks Mandi, that’s an excellent resource. You may have a point about the threats of dismissal being in line with other policies but dobbing on your friends says to me that they have not thought this through. Their FB page is fairly sanitized which I don’t have an issue with i.e. not one even slightly negative comment. However it signals to me that there is a culture of trying to control the message when you look at it in context with the SM policy. That approach is doomed to failure. It’s like painting a big sign on their corporate bum that says ‘kick me’.
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