It’s no secret that in today’s cancel-prone culture, social media can have a negative impact on companies – not just from corporate social media accounts, but also from those of individual employees. This includes more obvious things like posts that reflect poorly on a company’s reputation. But it also includes cybersecurity risks that can arise from social media activity, something which is too often overlooked.
In today’s blended and continuously connected world, our personal and professional lives are a digitally connected continuous stream, documented and available for public view. With this in mind it is imperative employers provide more comprehensive guidelines to secure and protect employee use of social media. Employers are reluctant to step into this space for fear of kicking a hornet's nest of individual privacy and personal freedom issues, but if done correctly, it doesn’t need to be an either/or situation; there is a way for employers to institute a corporate social media policy that balances protecting the company with protecting personal freedoms of speech.