Igniyte’s research finds 35% of UK workers don’t want to be friends with their managers on Facebook

The e-guide – which you can download for free here – follows a number of high-profile cases where employees have posted offensive, defamatory or ill-judged content from their personal social media accounts – thrusting their employer into the spotlight in the process.

The accompanying research of over 1,000 UK employees has found that 35% said they would accept some work colleagues as ‘friends’ on Facebook, but not their managers.

The study also encouragingly found that 39% of employees have read and follow their company’s social media policy, but a further 18% don’t even know if their company has a social media policy.

The research revealed some interesting trends in social media use across different sectors:

• Those working in the Finance sector are most likely to be judgemental of what they find on social media about an interviewer or interviewee, with almost 20% saying what they’d found had affected their judgement of that person.
• Property companies are most open to reputational risk from the social media behaviour of their employees, with 31% of property employees admitting their company doesn’t have a social media policy.
• Travel, Transport & Leisure employees are the most likely to keep their professional and personal social media lives separate, with a massive 45% saying they wouldn’t accept their manager as ‘friends’ on Facebook. 16% admitted they’d read their company’s social media policy, but don’t follow it, and just 6% said they’d be happy to promote their company using their personal social media accounts.
• Marketing & Advertising employees are – unsurprisingly – the most likely to have blurred professional and personal social media lives, with 36% saying they check their social media accounts before applying to a job to ensure they’re portraying a professional image. 23% also said they’re happy to promote their company through social media, and 10% even use their work email address to login to personal social media accounts.

Igniyte’s e-guide, created in partnership with HR Active, outlines the practical steps companies should be taking to educate employees on correct social media use and how to improve internal security to avoid a potentially devastating risk to reputation.

For further information on limiting corporate reputation risk, get in touch with me in complete confidence at simon@igniyte.co.uk or call me on +44 (0) 203 542 8689.