My employees shouldn’t blog… what if they say something bad?

My Chief Web Architect, Corey Smith, posted an interesting post on his blog. I thought that I would repost it here for you to read. You shoul consider blogs for your new website... either for public consumption or just as an internal communication mechanism. You can write posts yourself or publish news articles and opinions from the industry. Here is Corey's post.

I often have conversations with clients about setting up blogs for their employees. These blogs can be for internal use only as a way for employees to have a level of internal communication without flooding email accounts for other employees that really don’t care. These blogs can be on the public internet site allowing anyone to see.

It surprises me how often I hear the concern, "What if the employee says something that we don’t approve? I don’t want to have to police their writing all the time."

To this I ask, "Do you proof all of their emails? Do you listen to all their phone conversations? Do you go to all your client appointments with them to verify their speech?"

You are stupid to think that your employees always say things that are along company lines. You are naive to think that you can monitor and control all of your employee communication.

The fact is, a blog provides you with a level of security that you may not have had before. If the employee is dumb enough to say something in appropriate in a blog, you can address that with written proof. If the employee has a private conversation and says the same thing, you have nothing.

Get into the now and stop living in the past. The fact is, your employees are saying things… just give them a forum that you can monitor and maintain.