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Further to the study released last week, we find that many Canadian executives are worried about abuse of social network sites at work, but very few plan to do anything about it.

It could be because it seems like an awfully overwhelming problem. Ten years ago, preventing employee procrastination was as easy as disabling Solitaire on the company network. Now, the sheer volume of social networking sites means few operations know where to start.

More likely, though, is that since executives can see the value in the social media, they’re reluctant to forbid use of Facebook and Twitter. When applied to furthering the company’s goals, social media sites offer immense potential. But since there’s no way of monitoring what employees are doing while they’re on these sites, the chances for employee abuse-or breaches of corporate security- run rampant. I’m sure more than a few people on the c-level wish they could block access to part of these sites while allowing full use of others.

So what is the way to manage work-appropriate use of social media sites?

Refine deadlines. Set a daily deadline for all work involving social media sites and ask for daily updates. If it takes two days to create an organization-related event on Facebook, something just might be up.

Update employee confidentiality agreements. If there’s no stipulation that employees are to refrain from posting confidential information over social network sites, even to each other, make sure there is one.

Adopt social media platforms to the company intranet. Elements that are useful to company projects-RSS feeds, file sharing and instant messaging-can be added to the intranet. More than a few startups are devoted just to providing social media solutions to organizations.

If you can’t beat them, join them. Managers and executives should consider joining up themselves-and adding their employees as contacts or friends.

Since most social networking sites have updates and newsfeeds, bosses will be able to see right away who’s been messaging members of the company’s group and who’s been posting YouTube clips on their homepages.

And what employee is going to be brave enough to turn down the boss’ friend request?

Besides, in the process of monitoring their company’s social media projects, execs just might learn how to make use of all these sites have to offer.

And can’t that only help an organization’s social media objectives?

These are just a few ideas. Feel free to add more!

Categories: Social Media