Blogging Guidelines

IBM’s call to arms now means that they will have up to 300,000 bloggers working fror them, in the form of employees. But what will be the price? Compliance with the IBM Blogging Guidelines.

Is it really that bad? No of course not, in fact at a high level it is pretty good. Here the is executive summary:-

  1. Know and follow IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines.
  2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time — protect your privacy.
  3. Identify yourself — name and, when relevant, role at IBM — when you blog about IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
  4. If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
  5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
  6. Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information.
  7. Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
  8. Respect your audience. Don’t use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc., and show proper consideration for others’ privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory — such as politics and religion.
  9. Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.
  10. Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
  11. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.

Overall the guide is reasonable, however Scoble says he has broken some of the guidelines (which is ok as he works for Microsoft whos guideline is simple “Be Smart”) and he knows of employees at IBM who have also broken the guidelines.

What I find very interesting is this guide has been written by IBM employees through the use of an internal Wiki. Another interesting point, as James Snell states, is the guideline actually contradicts some of the generally agreed guidelines for employee blogging. I see this as a good thing, because it means that the IBM guidelines actually take into account the corporate culture.

I still have a few questions.

  • How many of the 300,000 potential employees actually contributed to the guidelines?
  • Or was it just the A-list bloggers inside IBM?
  • Did the many different local offices get a chance to input from a legal perspective, you can get yourself into a lot of hot water in some parts of the world based on what you write.
  • Has IBM incorporated the guidelines into the induction process, if no how long till they do?
  • Has there been communications to managers and HR professionals on how to handle when the guidelines are broken?

Where is home?

My wife spent the weekend in Sydney attending a 2 day prac for her Physiology subject at Uni and I stayed at home and had 2 full days of dad and son time. While Jayne learnt we played soccer, went to the school working bee, had pizza for dinner, played the PS2 and generally just hung out.

Last night we picked her up from the airport and on the way home Jayne said that she now felt that Melbourne was our home. I am back up in Sydney this week so I wonder if I will feel the same?

Turnover and your brand

Hugh Macleod’s post from last week, on the porous membrane, is popping up everywhere! I showed the picture to my wife (who is studying biology and psychology together), who immediate reaction was it looked like cells with the different chemicals moving in and out to generate an action potential. Even in this light it almost describes a blog, maybe that is where Hugh got the idea?

Anyway, Andrew (of Resourcing Strategies) put together an interesting take on the whole thing. He aligned most of (if not all of it) Hugh’s post to employment branding and the transparency within your organisation. To quote him:-

What the article says is that you need to align what your employees think the firm & job offer is all about with what the external world thinks.

So very true! When the rubber hits the road it does not matter how effectively you recruited the person, or their quality if the reality of the job you offered is not there volia the new recruit will disappear! What a great adaption of the image and post.

Let’s look at this a little further than I did before.

Think of A as management (the holders of the vision) and the outer area B as the employees (the ones he need to know about the vision). Ok you might not agree with this but most organisations are still run this way. Through the creation of conversations we break holes in membrane X employees begin to understand the vision. A greater understanding of vision then allows employees to ensure that their values match the vision, increases loyalty and in the long run creates and emotional attachment. These three factors work to give us Affective Commitment (AC) which makes up one side of an employee’s intention to stay (thanks to Colin Beames from the WRDI Institute). Yes blogs do help open up internal communications as when management blogs (truly blogs) we have a conversation that is transparent.

Now coming back to Andrew’s post. How well your organisation does to align what you are selling (by way of job postings) to the actual reality of the role helps with Job Satisfaction, the second side of an employee’s intention to stay. Ok while the alignment is not the only factor in job satisfaction but it has a very high factor in the first 12 months of employment. Now if you measure an employee’s intention to stay you have a key measure for possible turnover. Understanding possible turnover is much better than real turnover as real turnover is a lagging measure and you have already lost the employee.

Are you a Digerati?

Harold Jarche pointed me Seth Godin’s item on the New Digital Divide (did we close the last one?) and how to spot which side you stand on.

I want the throw out a challenge to all HR/Learning/Knowledge Management/Education professionals who have a blog and are Digerati to help one person every day understand. Not that being Digerati is the right thing, or the only thing or anything other than a method of effective use of tools and technology that provides a great ROI.

Now for a personal rant. We should also be working to ensure that our schools are also up to scratch, it is no longer acceptable for them to be turning out young adults who cannot participate in the new world.

Background checking service

From blog*on*nymity I found an interview with ZabaSearch’s President & General Counsel Robert Zakari and Chairman Nicholas Matzorkis.

ZabaSearch is yet another personal search/background checking service to entry the now very crowded market. The interview is very interesting, highlighting flaws in the system and process and should scare the living daylights out of anyone in the US.

What is interesting is that the obvious was not discussed, linkages with ATS vendors.