Social-media deployments in the workplace must take into consideration privacy concerns and intellectual-property risks.
Andrew Goldberg, executive vice president, Makovsky & Co.
As more employers implement social-media strategies, careful consideration must be given to employee
Sales and marketing are leading the charge to advance social technology use in business given their natural desire to deepen ties with consumers. Yet other functions, including R&D and manufacturing, are also making use of social tools in different industries.
The adoption of social technologies, however, is not without its perils for companies. Most social networks allow employers to have easy access to their employees. This sometimes leads to friction over privacy.
Active collaboration on social networks also sometimes leads to inadvertent confidentiality breaches. The main areas of the firm responsible for grappling with these issues are legal and HR. Precisely because of the risks involved, legal and HR professionals have been most resistant to giving social technologies a wider role in the enterprise.
Two connected questions emerge: To what degree can companies modulate the barriers to embracing social as a force inside the firm? And, can corporate attorneys and HR executives become more than watchdogs containing security breaches and evolve into more active players in integrating social into the firm?
