Over the last year there has been a radical change in corporate attitudes to social media. Organisations with previously tight controls – if not outright bans – on the workplace use of such tools as Facebook, Twitter, Yammer and even LinkedIn have responded to pressure from marketing, HR, R&D and other business units to explore the potential of social media for collaboration, sentiment analysis, advertising, recruitment and more.

But in doing so, they have found their often-draconian first-generation social media policies, jointly drawn up by their legal, HR and IT teams, are simply not fit for this new purpose.

There are, of course, almost as many policies as there are companies, but one – the Australian telecoms giant, Telstra – has become widely acclaimed for both creating one of the most grounded social media policies and for empowering its employees’ social engagement online.

In the true spirit of social media, though, Telstra has gone a step further by making its policy document and online training available “to the world”, in the words of Kristen Boschma, its head of online communications and social media.

Take the plunge

“There is now an immense appetite for knowledge about what the business can do with social media,” she says. “CIOs and CEOs have accepted they can no longer ignore social media and they are hearing from their sales and marketing teams about ways to harness the good aspects of social media and turn them in the business’s favour.” In doing so, they are overcoming such concerns as lost productivity and the exposure of proprietary information.

“The answer to those concerns is straightforward: social networking is happening anyway,” says Boschma. “Staff will find ways to use Facebook and Twitter – often via 3G mobiles. In any case, your staff, competitors and customers are talking about you, so why would you not want to listen and join in the conversation?”

The only way to deal with this is to dive in, she says, to support the engagement with a clear, widely communicated policy. “Social media is the new normal,” emphasises her colleague Mike Hickinbotham, Telstra’s social media senior advisor, who was instrumental in drawing up that policy.

Its “3 Rs of social media engagement” are designed to protect the interests of employees and the company. So when employees are using social media they need to be clear about who they are representing; to take responsibility for ensuring that any references to Telstra are factually correct and avoid breaching confidentiality requirements; and they show respect for the individuals and communities with which they interact.

“The 3 Rs are a way to educate people to avoid falling into the many ‘ego traps’ that put people in a position where they want to impress online friends by sharing something no one else knows – but which is company-confidential,” says Hickinbotham.

Critical to discouraging that kind of behaviour have been efforts to ensure the accessibility of Telstra’s policy. That has meant creating an easily digestible document but, more importantly, an education module. Since the launch of its policy last year, Telstra has rolled out an online training module (see link below) based on a comic book theme that guides users towards a test.

“When there are 40,000 people who we need to see, understand and comply with the policy, it is a major logistical challenge,” says Boschma. So far, about 75% of staff have taken the test. When that phase is complete, Telstra will assess whether it needs to update its policy, drawing on comments staff have fed into a dedicated wiki.

That underscores the fact that – as well as engaging with customers via a “Twitter centre”, live-chat, email, blogs and forums – Telstra makes extensive use of social media internally in areas such as ideas capture and collaboration.

It also points to greater opportunity than risk, says Hickinbotham. “If someone wants to do something wrong, social media – as with any channel – doesn’t necessarily help afford or hinder that.” But what could prevent that is transparency and education.

See also: Telstra’s social media policy and online training module (takes up to a minute to load); plus more expert analysis on social media policy