I think it is an infringement of liberties myself. You see, our marketing team have put out a rulebook on what an employee’s LinkedIn should look like, and we’ve all got to attend a training session on it. Everyone. I’m tempted to watch the recording rather than attend, but Big Bad Boss pings me to make sure I’m going. Not happy.
I’ve never met the two people running the training. Ocean and Alix are part of a new Social Advocacy team. It thought advocacy was to do with equality, but I’ve clearly got that wrong; they describe it as raising awareness of The Company using social media. They begin by talking about our individual LinkedIn profiles. There is now a strict format for how we should describe our current role, using a template with job information pulled from HRIS. Noooo. I don’t even put my real job title out there, let alone the wholly inaccurate summary from my job description. That is a very, very bad idea. I’m guessing that, fresh out of a media studies degree, they haven’t been around long enough to realise just how bad our HR data is.
Social media rules
I don’t say anything, but I’m struggling to see what my social media account has to do with them. Indeed, how many of us only use LinkedIn to stay in touch with former bosses in case we need a reference or to sniff around for a new role? Ocean tells we should also have a link to our LinkedIn profile in our email signature, which again must follow a strict layout. This is so all our external contacts get to hear all the great things we do which helps The Company to build followers. I’m sure my contacts at Smarmy Consulting and Mercenary Benefits will be fascinated.
Then they move on to posting and commenting on posts, dictating we should be putting out something positive about The Company at least every week. We learn there is a repository of thought-leadership articles and white papers we can access to post or repost as appropriate. I can see that might be a good idea for client-facing employees, but not for us tucked away in the hinterlands of the back office. And that’s where it starts to get really dark.
Personal posts
They recommend for us to relate back to the company when posting about personal stuff too. Ocean shows us an example of how Alix has ‘aced’ this on LinkedIn. Alix posted about her holiday in Thailand recently saying how lucky she was to have 28 days paid holiday from The Company. Another model employee posted about his new baby, raving about the benefits of paternity leave at The Company.
These suggestions offend me on so many levels. First, anyone posting about personal stuff on LinkedIn should be barred; there are other platforms for that. One of the reasons I barely look at LinkedIn is the deluge of posts about running marathons, exotic holidays, fundraising achievements, and general non-job-related boasting. It was bad enough reading about my previous manager’s move to an enviable household name or about a former colleague’s undeserved promotion, but now there is all this other ego drivel on there too.
Most of all, I think asking employees to use their personal life to advertise their employer goes way beyond the terms of the employment contract. And don’t get me started on babies; is it not enough that we must admire photos internally every time a colleague pops one out, without having my LinkedIn feed filled up like a creche. And finally, Ocean’s examples do not even put us in a good light. 28 days holiday is only average for the UK, and our paternity leave is merely the legal minimum. Whoop de do.
Benefits boasts
Big Bad Boss, however, has a different take. He gets all excited about how we can showcase our benefits through this ‘new’ medium. I can feel a piece of work coming on. And yes, he wants me to engage with Ocean and Alix, to create a whole set of examples our employees can use to boast about their company benefits. He suggests a post about cycling injuries and great health cover as an example.
My heart sinks: the last thing I want is any more photos of men in Lycra out there, even if they are injured. Cycling has become something of an obsession around here and it is vying with golf for our Higher Beings’ main competitive outlet. Maybe that’s what Big Bad Boss is thinking; it’s hard to get their attention on HR in board meetings, but perhaps they will get interested in our benefits when it comes to LinkedIn and posts about cycling. He may have a point there.
I suspect the other thing that caught his attention is the ‘LinkedIn Leaderboard’. Ocean and Alix have been secretly tracking who posts anything related to The Company and they have created a table of the most prolific. Shockingly, the top three positions are held by members of our leadership team. Don’t they have better things to do than faff about on social media, I wonder, like maybe running the company. Big Bad Boss doesn’t even feature on the list, and he won’t like that. Anything competitive has him gripped and he is all about being up there with the top dogs. I can see the creation of content for others to use it may give him some extra kudos with his peers. As long as I don’t have to be the one posting this sop; the very thought makes me cringe, and I just hope this idea doesn’t spread to other platforms. If it does, I’m going offline.
Next time…Candid introduces dental benefits
