Perhaps there is merit to both sides

This argument came up in a recent blog post discussion about keeping our business open longer hours, Want Higher Occupancy, Stay Open Longer and how, in doing so, our business increased noticeably on several basis points. The move caused a little riff from our employees as you might expect. However, in this instance I didn’t give them an option. Many of the comments we received from the post surrounded the topic of employee dissatisfaction, or perceived dissatisfaction, about extended hours in a field of work that typically closes up shop by 6 p.m. Staying open until 9 p.m. is perceived as radical.

Drive Them Until They Drop

In a former life I worked for someone else with a policy (or ritual) that you stayed late on Thursday evenings. The company brought in food and folks worked late dining on Chinese food or deli delight at their desks. That always seemed intrusive to me — to mandate folks to stay and work late. Heck, some people played solitaire on their computers, which is really silly, but stayed because the had to. Working hard, and working more than the standard 40 hours has always been part of who I am, but I want to come and go when I want, which is a contradiction to how we are running our own business now.

Is There a Better Way?

A small business is at a disadvantage, because if someone quits, there is likely little to no overlap. Therefore, it is sometimes easier to go with the flow and not upset the employee apple cart. We tested the idea of longer hours earlier in the year, and also saw an uptick in business, even with only staying open later a couple of nights. But whenever we would talk about staying open later more often, there was push back. Whenever we talked about less overlap there was push back. So, not until we simply said these are the new hours, and there will be no overlap did it happen. No one quit, and everyone has adjusted. Apparently we didn’t need overlap either, and business has increased.

The great companies of today, such as the famed Zappos, where customer service is off the chart, must take a different approach to employee wants and needs, or do they? They are able to get employees to do things that other companies only dream of. Having spent more time than I care to admit on airplanes, Southwest is another excellent example of empowered employees that can actually solve your problem.

So Who Makes the Rules?

We come full circle in that great companies have rules, they aren’t run nilly willy by the employees, and in some cases the folks heading up those great companies are hard drivers themselves. Where is the right balance, particularly for small business? I can tell you that our December partnership and investor meetings went much smoother due to better results. But what if half our staff had quit over the issue, which was my fear and the reason we didn’t do it sooner?

How many other critical decisions get nixed because we are afraid of how our employees may react?

How are you handling these things in your business, do you choose employee moral over better business results?

Related articles

• 10 Employee Retention Tips (brighthub.com)
• How to manage part-time employees? (thehimalayantimes.com)
• Freedom beats carrots to motivate staff (theglobeandmail.com)

The post Who Runs Your Business: You Or Your Employees? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The exploration of your personal brand is quite a captivating experience. It is, after all, all about you. Human beings, by nature, prioritize themselves over others. Whether from an inherited survival of the fittest conditioning imperative in our ancient ancestors or just a matter of world perspective, we do think about ourselves on some scale of priority.

But therein lies a danger we must recognize. While your personal brand may well serve a valuable purpose for you and your company, separating and recognizing the best interests of those two entities is important. Regardless of how successful or influential our personal brand is, we need to be certain to keep our egos in check.

Deloitte’s recent Ethics & Workplace Survey shows 53 percent of employees say their social networking pages are not an employer’s concern. But 60 percent of executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organization online. Shockingly, one-third of employees surveyed NEVER considered what their boss or customers might think before posting material on the Internet.

Letâ€s say youâ€re a product development researcher for a toy company. You blog, participate in forums online and build a well-respected brand as a toy developer. Everyone knows you work for ABC Toys, but your opinion is clearly marked as your own in your online life. But the head of product development at ABC Toys is nervous that your authority in the industry can taint what competitors, suppliers, vendors and customers think about ABC Toys. Your opinions about processes, products of other companies and more are not opinions ABC Toys is comfortable having broadcast to the world.

You just continue to blog along, participating in communities and talking about what interests you, but your growing online presence starts to look like an ego play to ABC Toys. They start to wonder if you’re spending work time doing what you do. They are concerned you may be using your position to jockey for a promotion, or worse, a job with another company.

The communities you participate in will be severely disappointed in ABC Toys if you stop participating or when they find out ABC Toys has censored you a bit. So whatâ€s the company to do?

I hear you yelling about personal rights and personal time and all that jazz. But if you put your company on a LinkedIn profile, you are connected to that company online. Thus, your funny Facebook photos, while not directly connected to your company, are connect-able to it. Your employer does have the right to hold you accountable for your online life.

At some point, we also have to admit that personal brand growth is intoxicating. For some people, it feeds a hungry ego. When motivated by ego, we often run awry. While most of us can and do keep that ego in check and aren’t motivated for wholly selfish reasons, our managers don’t always know what’s inside our heads and can assume too much.

But we should recognize that if personal branding or reputation management is so important in getting a job, it should also be considered important in keeping one. As such, those with or building strong personal brands need to take a few simple steps to ensure your employer doesnâ€t issue that awful ultimatum of stop or be fired.

1. Bring Personal Branding Into HR Conversations When applying for a job, ask what the company stance is on employees blogging, whether you can identify as being with the company on your personal websites or in communications on social networks and blogs. Define the goals of your personal brand with Human Resources or your hiring manager and discuss them. If youâ€re already in your job, go have those conversations now and establish some comfortable parameters.

   You may also want to establish some goals for your personal brand tied to company success, then negotiate personal rewards for achieving them. For instance, agree with your boss that for every new business lead or conversion generated by your audienceâ€s outreach to you online, you get a bonus. Perhaps you can set a lofty goal with the reward being a raise or promotion.

2. Decide How Much/Little You Want To Affiliate With Your Company

   Identifying yourself as a blogger who works at company X can certainly help build your personal brand as you borrow a bit of company equity to attract respect and readers. But your ideas are what will make you relevant to your audience in the long term. If you want to be strongly affiliated with your company, sell the benefits of an influential personal brand to your boss. Explain to them how your influence can be used to drive website traffic, solicit customer feedback and even be a social media outpost for a company that might be afraid to toe those waters.

   But make sure youâ€re prepared to give up a bit of control of what you can and cannot do or say. Thereâ€s no such thing as a gray area here. If you identify yourself with your company, the company has the right to protect their reputation and investment in you. And if you disagree, theyâ€ll likely stop sending you a paycheck.

3. Educate Your Boss & Co-Workers On Personal Branding

   Strong personal brands can quickly lead to interesting inter-office angst. Your fellow employees may be jealous youâ€ve gotten some cyber-blessing they donâ€t have (because they donâ€t know to ask) or frustrated youâ€re getting attention, promotions and the like by, “playing on the Internet.” Your boss and those co-workers may also start to develop some concerns youâ€re spending too much time working on your personal presence online and not doing what you were hired for.

   The only way to get around the office politics is to proactively teach people the benefits of a strong personal brand and show them how to do it. Do keep in mind, however, you need to show them the companyâ€s benefits of a personal brand first. If you make it part of the departmentâ€s business objectives, theyâ€re more apt to see the merit and no longer think youâ€re just goofing off online all the time.

4. Do An Ego Check

   Every so often, you just need to step back and ask yourself, “Am I working for the company or am I working for me?” If you want to keep your job, you should continually take steps to ensure you are pushing forward the agreed upon company messages, goals or objectives. If youâ€ve drawn a distinction between the two (company and individual) with your boss, then ask how much time youâ€re spending on your personal brand during work hours. If itâ€s more than what your boss or company is comfortable with, cut back.

Certainly, in an ideal world, all our personal brands would be so successful we wouldnâ€t need to work for someone else. But reality is a much different picture. As strong as we agree the building of personal brands is a relevant and necessary endeavor, we shouldnâ€t lose sight of the fact that our employers have a right and should have a role in where, when and how we shape them.

A penny for your thoughts. The comments are yours.

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The post Walking The Fine Line Of The Personal Brand appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

1) Companies: Hire the right employees that have integrity, sound business judgment, and know how to communicate both internaly and externally
2) Companies: Trust in these employees to be your ambassadors to the world, give them the benefit of the doubt, and let them self-correct amongst themselves. I also advise instituting internal communication tools to help them, and setting down basic guidelines…often created BY the employees.
3) Employees: Those out in the social sphere should act their best, demonstrate your ability, and try not to embarrass the company. If you do make a mistake, quickly apologize, correct the mistake. Always act in an ethical manner.
4) Social Sphere: Thatâ€s everyone else in the world, is to simply recognize the challenges as companies move forward in this new world.

Jeremiah has long been a thought leader in the realm of social media and web strategy, but his ability to cut through the clutter and simplify an issue is why I read him. You can find him at www.web-strategist.com/blog/ or go ahead and subscribe to his RSS Feed here.

Oh, and I’m sure Crystal will chime in with a comment.

IMAGE: From www.pragia.cz

The post Social Media Policy: Corporate, Personal Responsibility appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Crystal will be guest authoring on the subject here soon as she and I are working together to develop a spring presentation she will be giving to a group of area young advertising professionals. As we at Doe Anderson begin to develop both company policies and advice on the matters for our clients, I’m sure we’ll discuss, debate and converse about them here.

The primary concern for me was from an employee standpoint. Though mindful of the agency position and protective of its clientel and reputation, it has been my position that what someone does in their personal life, even online, is not the concern of their employer. Regardless of the open-mindedness of a given company, however, Crystal makes a valid point that HR folks, managers and other decision-makers will apply unwritten prejudices if they happen to know what is on a certain MySpace profile or Facebook wall post.

“Whether people want to admit it or not, the prejudices are there,” she told me.

And she’s right.

I began blogging about this issue on my public relations blog, The Straight Pitch. Several links are below for those interested.

We are interested in your take on the matter, too. Where should employers draw the line between someone’s personal life and the public forum of the Internet. Is not connecting yourself to your place of work online enough? Will employees with passionate opinions or those in need of a creative outlet have to resort to pseudonyms to self-publish in the Web 2.0 world? What are the Web 2.0 rules when it comes to business and whose job is it to write them?

We’d like you to tell us.

Related Links:

1. Paul Gillin Weighs In On Networking Debate – The Straight Pitch
2. Is “Friend” A Four-Letter Word On Facebook – Strategic Public Relations
3. Are You On Facebook? – Blog Till You Drop!
4. Facebook, LinkedIn Should Differ – The Straight Pitch
5. Facebook vs. LinkedIn – ConverStations

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