We’re ending 2010 with WikiLeaks Facebook legal claims, scandals triggered by cell phone photos, and the spectrum of tweets, posts, purloined (stolen) documents and workplace chatter flooding cyberspace. There’s no doubt that worries over confidentiality, privacy and liability will continue to flood our workplaces in 2011.
Reactive legal protections and penalties won’t put the cyber or wiki genie back in the bottle once it has escaped. With that in mind, here are 11 tips to help you ensure 2011 is not your staff’s or organization’s year of cyber-gloom.
No matter what your role – HR manager, legal counsel or organizational leader – you can remind people of these principles, talk about them, and help make them norms of civil behavior in your workplace.
- Think before you tweet. One hundred forty characters made up of four-, five- and six-letter words can ruin your career and reputation. Now why are you posting that on Facebook or Twitter again?
- Say please, not cheese. Does that person or group want their pictures and videos taken for your future distribution anywhere? Why not ask if it’s OK first, particularly at parties, social events, and company meetings. As I pointed out in my recent holiday post, Don’t let social networking Scrooge your holiday – or your career. Do you want your picture taken after one, two or more cocktails? No one else does, either.
- Say it, don’t write it. Context is better communicated “live” through tone of voice and inflection. You can explain what you really mean directly. If the meaning and tone of what you are communicating could be better understood in live conversation, don’t use email, chat, text or social media to do it.
- A small circle of friends beats a web of diffusion. The more people you release information to, the broader the audience you are reaching. Do you really want your comments, photos, videos and musings posted to literally millions of people? Get used to the fact that you can’t communicate to a distinct and limited group with any online communication.
- You can’t write an email in disappearing ink. Who hasn’t written something really stupid? Unless it’s photocopied or scanned, a note, memo or letter reaches only a limited audience. And, once you attach a document and send it to others, you have unleashed viral cyber-communication you can’t control but are responsible for launching.
- Do I want mama, papa and my significant other’s mama and papa to see this? Need I say more?
- Is the pain to you or others worth the gain? If you send this communication and then it is saved or sent to others, is it worth dealing with the fallout that follows, including the pain you’ll regret you caused to others?
- It’s not your diary – it’s everyone’s. Think of you what you write, all of it, as your diary. Do you really want your most private or passing thoughts to be read by everyone else? That’s what you’re doing when you send that stuff via email or post it anywhere.
- Alcohol + cell phones + the Internet = your potential doom. Don’t use that digital camera, email or text function while drinking. Social doom may follow. By the way, friends shouldn’t let friends take photos and videos while drinking, especially at business events.
- Would you post this on a billboard that everyone driving through your city could see? Keep that in mind with everything you write and communicate electronically because that is exactly what you are doing.
- Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. This applies to lots of activities in the physical world. It should also be the mantra for what we post and circulate in the virtual world.
Prudence more than policies, logic more than lawsuits, common sense more than causes of action and online civility more than online codes are the key to making sure your 2011 is not ruined by cyberspace blunders.
Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq., is president and CEO of Atlanta-based ELI Inc., which provides award-winning learning solutions that transform complex laws and ethical codes of conduct into simple behavioral rules that improve performance, reduce legal risk, and create productive workplace cultures. Mr. Paskoff is the former co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Compliance Law Training and Communication Subcommittee. He can be contacted at info@eliinc.com.
