Can employers stop employees from blogging about work?
Posted by Greg Friese at 6 July, 2010, 5:22 pmIn the emergency response field, due to our access to patient’s protected health information and concerns about confidentiality, there is a lot of worry from employers about employees blogging about patient encounters that are true or loosely based on the truth. One of the best bloggers in EMS, Medic999, has decided to step away from blogging. While he emphasizes that he has not been asked to stop blogging he senses the pressure building in his organization against social media expression by employees.
Episode 94 of the EMS Garage podcast, the Day Social Media Stood Still, discusses Medic999′s departure from blogging, the implication to others, and the need for employers to clearly state social media policies for on-duty time and off-duty social media conversation. The conversation included some of the top voices in Fire and EMS social media like, Jamie Davis the PodMedic, Tim Noonan the Rogue Medic blogger, Chris Montera host of the EMS Garage and EMS Leadership podcasts, Kyle David Bates host of the First Few Moments podcast, Ted Setla the filmmaker of Level Zero and Chronicles of EMS, Natalie Quebodeaux co-host of the GenMed podcast and blogger, and Justin Schoor the Happy Medic blogger and co-start of the Chronicles of EMS. Hear what these industry leaders have to say about the importance of organizational support for social media and the potential positive impact on our communities.
Near the end of the EMS Garage episode 94 I shared a special discount code to receive a free copy of the PIOSocialMediaTraining.com ebook – Social Media Policies for First Responder Agencies.
Does your organization have a social media policy?
Does your blog put your job at risk?
Related posts:
- Consequences to Employees for Using Social Media
- Technology and Social Media for EMS
- Episode 9: A Look At The Success Of #SM4R
- Episode 6: The Power Tools Of Emergency Notification
- 5 Reasons and Methods For PIOs To Develop and Distribute Social Media
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2 Responses to “Can employers stop employees from blogging about work?”
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I work at a public university, not a first-responder agency, and serve as PIO for my campus. We have a draft policy in the works; I'm on the committee helping develop it.
GovLoop.com (@govloop) is a great resource for connecting with people in various agencies. They have a list of policy links (possibly only available to members–create free log-in): http://data.govloop.com/dataset/Web-2-0-Governanc…
You can post your policies to this database created by Chris Boudreaux (@cboudreaux): http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php. It's a mix of public agencies and private industries–lots of great examples here.
Our policy will ask people to remember they represent the university in the public eye but we aren't restricting personal blogging on your own time.
On my personal blog I have a disclaimer that says my opinions have nothing to do with my employer. I used to actually list my agency in the disclaimer, then realized that by doing so I created a connection between my blog content and my employer. When I did list the agency it was with the best intentions of transparency and full disclosure but it had this unintended side effect.
Those who spend some time searching my name can put together my day job and my personal blog. This type of search/linkage isn't difficult but there's no reason for anyone to create an unnecessary link between personal expression and employer name.
Guidance for public employees will continue to evolve in this rapidly changing landscape.
@BarbChamberlain
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
Washington State University Spokane http://www.spokane.wsu.edu
@WSUSpokane