Your Employment and HR Guide
(ACC Docket — April)
Employees: You never really know what it’s like to have them until you manage them. Oh sure, when you don’t manage any employees, you think you know it all. You find out how much you don’t know when you get promoted.
I worked in my husband’s company — a bootstrapped telecommunication firm — for three years. Our staff’s experiences and perspectives were varied. To say that I finally learned complete ownership — literally and figuratively — of managing employees and money is a gross understatement. When it’s your own checkbook, you look at nothing the same ever again. And when it’s your name and reputation on the line, your focus becomes even more so acute.
The April ACC Docket is loaded with articles about traditional employment law issues and covers two fairly new employee management issues: social media and workplace bullying. In most companies, employee overhead is generally one of the top three cost centers. And that does include employee litigation, which is something we all want to avoid. ACC’s Employment and Labor Committee is one of the most active we have and they always deliver content, perspective and rock solid experience to lean on to help you manage this area well.
Products break. Cash ebbs and flows. Vendors come and go. How employees handle it impacts your business. How they treat each other and your customers impacts the bottom line. How employees present themselves on social media platforms impacts your image and your brand. How well prepared your company is impacts you.
According to Mashable, about six million of us have registered Twitter accounts. Fifty million are on LinkedIn and Facebook says it has more than 400 million active account users. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell’s 2009 global survey show that more than 70 percent of lawyers were members of an online social network — up nearly 25 percent the previous year. That’s a lot of opportunity for your employees to represent your company. This is new territory for most companies. If your company does not already have a social media policy, what are you waiting for?
