Employment law attorney and noted blogger (www.delawareeemploymentlawblog.com) Molly DiBianca gives specific language for employers to include in a social medial policy in light of recent activity by the National Labor Relations Board. She recently spoke on the subject of creating a social media policy at the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium (AEIS). DiBianca is an associate with Young Conway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP in Wilmington, Delaware, and frequent contributor to Delaware Employment Law Letter.

In a previous post, we looked at the issue of goodbye e-mails from the HR practitioner’s point of view. Now, employment law attorney Eileen M. Johnson shares her insights into what can be a tricky situation.

A recent article by a Wall Street Journal intern on “farewell e-mails” presented an insightful look at e-mail messages from employees who were preparing to leave their job (voluntarily or involuntarily) and sharing some parting words with their coworkers.

It used to be that employers would offer a farewell luncheon or party for longtime employees who were retiring or for management staff who were moving to a new company. The departing employee’s supervisor and coworkers would all say nice things about him before the soon-to-be ex-employee had an opportunity to say a few words to the group. But times have changed. Employees move through jobs like they’re playing hopscotch, and the employee farewell party is a thing of the past at many job sites. read more…

A couple of weeks ago, I read  an article in the Wall Street Journal written by an intern who is contemplating what he will write in his goodbye e-mail to his coworkers at the paper. The article was written from an employee’s perspective and included tips for other employees on not burning bridges with these e-mails. When I was finished with the article, I was left wondering about the HR perspective on this type of e-mail. Should they even be allowed as a practice?

To get frontline perspectives from HR practitioners, I took the issue to the HR Hero Employers Forum. Here are some of their responses. read more…

Employment law attorney Richard M. Yurko, Jr., reflects on the increasingly informal nature of communications as we move from face-t0-face to telephone to e-mail to text messages and offers suggestions for HR professionals having problems with a texting workforce.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal described the phenomenon of the texting revolution that is upon us. The average teenager (age 13-17) sends and receives 3,339 texts per month ― more than 100 per day. Although adults ages 45-54 aren’t quite as prolific, they send and receive 323 texts each month (a 75% increase over last year). But there’s still a large gap between the two age groups. With newer and faster smartphones and the growing popularity of social media, expect the use of texting and other electronic communication methods to continue to grow. Young adults, however, will undoubtedly continue to lead the revolution.

A New Generation

A few years from now, the teen texting fanatics of today will be your new employees, and they bring a perspective and skill set to the workplace that may be unprecedented. While their computer skills may be impressive, they may not have the social and communication skills that many employers expect of new employees. How you respond to the challenge may determine how successful you are in integrating these new employees into your workforce. read more…

In the second installment of a series on on executive Q&A videos, I shared Chip Cruze’s tips for making a video and posting it on the company intranet. For this post, I asked Cruze to give his perspective as communications planner on the benefits of executive Q&A videos.

When deciding if executive Q&A videos are right for your company, consider these facts:

• After a small, one-time investment (Flip UltraHD Video Camera – Black, 8 GB, 2 Hours (3rd Generation) NEWEST MODEL and Flip Video Tripod), the videos cost nothing but the time it takes to make and post them.

• The videos “cultivate a culture of communication” where “everyone feels welcome to ask” and “every question is fair game.”

• The videos can go further to creating an “open door” culture than an actual open door. Many executives and managers say they have an open door policy and they mean it. But it’s hard for many employees to walk through that door. “The majority people just aren’t going to walk into the CEO’s office and ask for a minute,” Cruze reasons. It’s much easier to submit a question for a video Q&A.

• Most videos should take only 5-10 minutes to make (you don’t want them to be too long). It would take most of us exponentially longer to type up, proof, and polish a companywide email or memo with the same amount of information.

Technology for HR: Videos aren’t the only way to use your intranet as an employee engagement tool. Research more options for getting the most out of your intranet online.

In the final post of the series on executive Q&A videos, I’ll talk to some of our company’s executives who participated in Cruze’s videos to get their perspectives.

– Celeste Blackburn

Want to start harnessing the power of your intranet to drive employee engagement, post your handbook, communicate with employees in an emergency, and more? The Technology for HR manual guides you through making the most of your company’s intranet.

In a previous post, I wrote about video Q&As with the C suite from my perspective as an employee just having watched series of said videos. I liked how they were done, giving employees to ask the hard questions anonymously and at the same time showing us that it was our department heads and president answering our questions (instead of rubber stamping an e-mail written by someone else).

For the second installment of the series into executive Q&A videos, I went to Chip Cruze, the executive producer of the series and our internal communications planner, for the inside scoop on making a video and what to do with the finished product. Here are his tips:

• It doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate.  Cruze shoots with a flip camera on a tripod set up on the interviewee’s desk.

• No reshoots! If at all possible, you want these answers to be unrehearsed. The more polished the answers become, the less genuine they will seem. If the video will feature more than one question, do everything in one take. Don’t splice anything together. “You don’t want to look slick,” Cruze says.

• Even though you want the videos to be “intentionally unscripted,” you can let the executives see the questions beforehand. They just have to promise not to rehearse in front of the bathroom mirror. It’s important to ensure the right people get the right questions.  Send out a list of all the questions and let the executives decide which ones best suit their expertise.

• Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. In their first videos, have the executives start with a little bit of biographical information. Cover the basics like name and a description of the work they do with the company. Then, have them offer up a little bit about themselves outside of work. It will help employees see them as more than the suit in the corner office.

• Post the videos on the company’s intranet. Depending on how you set security for your intranet, this offers an employees-only access option. Also, Cruze points out, “Everybody that is going to be here hasn’t always been here, but they should still have access to these answers and the personal side of these executives.” Posting the videos on your intranet creates an online library that you can use to familiarize new employees with your management team and employees can reference and watch  again if a question comes up.

Technology for HR: Research more options for using your intranet for employee engagement online.

Tune in net week when I investigate the benefits of executive Q&A videos from a communications planer’s perspective.

– Celeste Blackburn

Want to start harnessing the power of your intranet to drive employee engagement, post your handbook, communicate with employees in an emergency, and more? The Technology for HR manual guides you through making the most of your company’s intranet.

Employee participation in social media continues to raise the blood pressure of employers across the country. In just the last several weeks, there have been several stories involving employees whose online commentary has their employers up in arms.

One story comes from the New York City Ballet. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ballet will be one of the country’s first major performing arts companies to regulate its employees’ social-media activities. As you may have guessed, the decision to institute a social-media policy did not come from out of the blue. Instead, it was prompted by an employee’s comments.

That employee, Devin Alberda, is a member of the company’s corps de ballet. Alberda, a Twitter fan, has been tweeting snarky comments about the company’s performances, making thinly veiled references to his boss, and posting what many feel should be kept behind the velvet curtain.

According to MyFoxNY.com, the ballet is said to be negotiating a social-media policy with the dancers’ union, the American Guild of Musical Artists. Complicating the negotiations is the fact that the ballet is a public trust, which increases the likelihood that an employee’s comments about it will constitute speech on a matter of public concern.

According to the WSJ, the policy would warn employees that the company may monitor public comments made online. The policy is also said to require employees to include a disclaimer to make clear that their comments aren’t employer-sanctioned. The proposed policy also would prohibit a dancer from sharing information about another dancer’s injury or illness. Finally, the policy is said to prohibit employees from posting photographs of company events. All three of these provisions are excellent ideas that employers should consider when drafting a social-media policy.

Technology for HR manual and HR Laws subscribers tip: Research what you should tell your employees about Twitter online

– Molly DiBianca

Are you struggling with the Twitter (microblog) aspect of your social media policy? Want to know what limitations you can set on employees and what your policies should say? The Technology for HR manual addresses those and many other Twitter-related topics.

There is an interesting conversation in process over on the Employers Forum. Poster Paul in Cannon Beach is detailing and answering questions about how he used Facebook during the recent tsunami scare (Cannon Beach is on the Oregon coast). Paul previously has contributed a series of posts about his problems with Facebook to the tech blog, go to the Employers Forum to see how the social network redeemed itself in this crisis.

More evidence that strict social media policies are needed for today’s workforce as another employee gets in hot water for a posting a less than professional tweet. The lesson here for HR: Your policies have to keep up with employee use of Facebook, Twitter and smartphones during work–and after.

Who knew cricket fans could bring the Internet to its knees? I don’t know a thing about the sport, but I do admire the passion of its fans. Desperately seeking some type of cricket segue, right now.

It’s Oscar weekend! If you can’t catch this Sunday’s telecast, here are a few options for watching the award of award shows on your mobile phone. Predictions, anyone? Here are mine: “The King’s Speech” rules the night, Natalie gets her Best Actress statuette and “The Social Network” fails to “friend” Oscar. See you on the red carpet.

What else is happening?

-Ralph Gaillard

Chances are you probably use e-mail to handle much, if not most, of your business communications. But have you ever gotten lost in the back and forth of an e-mail that is the result of hitting “reply all” multiple times? Have you been turned off by someone using their business e-mail in a very unprofessional way?

“It’s not uncommon to have only an e-mail relationship with certain colleagues — colleagues we may never meet in person or even on the phone,” says Janis Fisher Chan, author of E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide. “The words we write are very real representations of our companies and ourselves. We must be sure that our e-mail messages are sending the right messages about us.”

With that in mind, we offer the following tips for writing a business e-mail: read more…