Question: We notice a lot of employees put “Opinions Are My Own” on their Twitter profiles. Should we have our employees do something similar?
I have struggled with this topic from the very beginning because there is the practical component to this question which is do disclaimers actually make a difference and then there is the legal component for companies and what their employees do and say online.
The biggest question I have always had is in either case does it really matter?
If an employee does something idiotic and posts it online, will a disclaimer actually prevent the public from having negative opinions about the company? Further, does the disclaimer actually protect a company from any sort of legal action?
For instance, say you post an inappropriate photo or you make a racist or bigoted statement. Should a disclaimer make any difference for the company or individual?
According to legal sources, the disclaimer has no legal effect and isn’t going to make any difference if someone decides to associate your words and/or actions with your company.
In the end, companies need to make sure that employees understand that their digital presence will in fact have a direct impact as to how the company is viewed regardless of how many disclaimers that they make and if they want to exercise their right to free speech and perhaps online troublemaking that they will in fact (or at least should be) held accountable.
As for whether or not companies need to enforce having their employees put these little disclaimers on all of their social accounts including Twitter; that is really up to the company. However, they don’t need to do so.
Does your company require employees to put disclaimers on their Social Media handles? Do you believe they make a difference?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.