To monitor, or not to monitor? It is widely accepted by corporate social media and risk managers that major brand damage can occur via a social channel, but real harm can also come from employees’ social media accounts. For regulated companies, this is certainly true — in fact, they are legally required to monitor employee social media. But most companies should consider monitoring their employees key social accounts as a corporate risk and brand protection discipline.
Part of the corporate risk assessment (conducted by the risk team) should include an analysis of the risk profile presented by employee social media and whether a monitoring program is an important addition. If the risk profile is low, a monitoring program can be bypassed, if it is medium or high (such as a company that has a strong M&A practice or a large intellectual property portfolio), then this practice should be adopted. The monitoring program could focus on key employee types that are employed in a higher risk area, and not all employees. This certainly makes sense for very large corporations. However, every company should have a general employee social media policy that covers all employees.