Think Beyond Per Tool Usage Policies

A good article to scan on the topic of blog usage policies that also includes some informative links to follow. However, this is not a new problem. Most organizations have had to address technology usage policies for some time (you can go all the way back to people participating on CompuServe forums and other bulletin board systems over dial-up). So the first thing to check is whether your enterprise has an overall information technology usage policy that handles internal and external situations. It is also important to also verify whether employees have been properly notified and have acknowledged in some way that they are aware of such policies (which might also intersect with code of conduct and related procedures). Specific policies (for instance, on blogs) can then be defined within this framework to provide people with more specific information. It is important that all of these policy and procedure efforts outline how the organization handles monitoring and enforcement methods since those employer practices might touch on topics such as employee privacy rights and HR activities (e.g., supervisor notification, employee warning, termination process for certain types of infringement).

That "online communication policy," released in November 2006, sets standards for employees when they're acting as "a delegate of the company."

Specifically, they're expected to disclose their association with Dell whenever they do any sort of blogging, social networking, Wikipedia entry-editing, or other online activities related to or on behalf of the company. If the subject matter crosses over into hobbies or people's personal lives, "there would be no rationale for us to get involved in that," Pearson said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Translation: "If someone is a fisherman and they want to talk about fly fishing outside of work, then that's not our business, it's personal," said Pearson. "But if someone is going to talk about notebooks and anything related to Dell, they have to say they're from Dell."

Corporate employee blogs: Lawsuits waiting to happen? | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Comments

[Michel Savoie]

Another great example of really good (and reasonable and decent) blogging guidelines are IBM's own internal guidelines, which they've published.

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

I've worked with our legal department here at RBC at developing our guidelines and we took some really good hints from IBM's established guidelines.

[Buy Online Rx]

I would be really interested to hear from anyone in the agile community who was successful in gaining a spot on the core PMBOK v5 committee. I hope there are some agile proponents represented. So please drop me a line if you were successful.

[mens health]

I just don’t see how the right solution can be so tightly disciplined to a dollar figure. By all means, recognize that a problem has a cost attached to it, and therefore the solution must be limited by that financial context.