I came across this story yesterday and at first I was struck by two things – how the heck is the network the military set up such that they can use Twitter, Facebook etc? Then I realised of course must be mobile phone technology – I mean an iPhone can do what a lot of people use a laptop for. You can surf the web, send and receive emails and of course text update most social networks.
After initially feeling sympathy for the Marines I could see the sense the management of the military had taken. I mean it’s vital that morale amongst men and women remains cohesive. This post is about morale and it’s importance in the military as opposed to whether we should be in any particular conflict.
It does bring up for me an important point for all organisations that have employees – do you have a Social Media Management Policy? Do organisations need one? For example let’s imagine you are an advertising agency – you think you have all the ICT security bases covered. You don’t allow USB sticks in or out and you monitor the data and use of laptops. Think Skype. The organisation may think Skype is a good way of employees in the field keeping in touch at zero cost. However Skype allows the transfer of files Skype to Skype. I’m sure it’s unnecessary to explain further how a disaffected employee could transfer a whole load of information to another organisation and then go join them. Said disaffected employee clears their Skype history, how would the average Manager know about the transfer of data?
Next, an employee goes on Twitter and bad mouths their employer – can you take action against them under your current Code of Conduct or would you have to resort to lengthy legal measures. If they use a user name as opposed to their real name with no profile how would you know who it was? How about they Tweet highly confidential destructive information? What then?
So I moved from ‘that’s not fair on the troops’ to ‘how many organisations have even given the impact of web 2.0 a thought in terms of confidentiality and morale?’
