Social Networking Policy

[Guest]

Some advise required. Many of my staff had accepted parents as friends on Facebook, which did concern me as I want staff to maintain professionalism, which facebook tends to not put across in some cases.

 

All the staff signed a confidentiality agreement. I have given several reminders to staff about not accepting parents, and recently reminded staff that ALL parents must be removed.

 

I now have three members of staff who still have parents as friends and I want to instigate a disciplinary procedure.

 

Has anybody had experience in this area.

 

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Susan]

Can you really make that sort of demand on your staff? They need to maintain confidentiality without a doubt but Im not sure you can dictate who they are friends with on facebook or otherwise.

[Cait]

We have a facebook group for our parents to chat to each other. It works brilliantly for planning fundraising events for those parents who can't get to meetings. Most parents seem to be on facebook and it means I can send a message to a load of parents at once. It's a closed group and I have control over who enters and I can remove any posts that might be breaching confidentiality or whatever.

 

This means also, that staff don't have to have parents as 'friends' on there, as they can go into the designated area to chat if need be

[Upsy Daisy]

I was wondering that too.

 

You couldn't stop them from being friends with parents outside the setting or chatting if they met them in Tesco.

 

What if they were the ones who recommended your setting to the parents in the first place?

 

I can't see that you really have any right to tell them who to communicate with outside work as long as they are behaving professionally and maintaining confidentiality at all times. If they are not trustworthy on Facebook I would suggest that they are not trustworthy in any other arena either.

 

Do you have particular concerns about their ability to maintain confidentiality and behave professionally or is it more a matter of principle for you?

 

Would it be more appropriate for you to write to staff and parents reminding them of staff's responsibility to behave responsibly inside and outside the setting and that this includes on social networking sites?

 

I think I would feel quite resentful if my employer indicated that I was not to be trusted in this way. Perhaps that's why they have refused to remove the parents as requested.

Edited January 28, 2010 by Upsy Daisy

[Cait]

what if they were already friends, or family?

[Guest]

what if they were already friends, or family?

 

Indeed, I am the manager of a preschool and was already friends with many of the parents as another parent from the school playground before I got the job. I just don't talk about work on my page, and only put things on there that I am happy for everyone to see anyway. A couple of the mums from preschool were very close friends before I got the job, and I would be pretty peeved if someone told me who I could and couldn't be friends with. Facebook is a very good thing if used properly, and we have just set up a closed page for our committee and fundraising too.

 

Clare

[belle06]

I have a social networking policy that guides staff generally on social networking and what as employers we expect their condut to be I will try and remember to get it from work and upload it tomorrow. Please message me if I forget. Thanks

[Cait]

here's the link to it Belle!

[Beau]

I am afraid I am with the others on this one Sheila. I would feel extremely aggrieved if I were told to remove 'friends' from my Facebook just because they are parents of children at a setting I worked at. I have made many good friends over the years through my work with parents and these good relations go a long way to 'promoting' the setting and shouldn't be underestimated.

 

I think your problem is not this, but more an attitude of the staff at your setting. From your previous comments on this subject I get the impression that many of your staff are young girls with little regard for the setting outside of work. This is the attitude that you need to address, and bringing a disciplinary into action for comments about the setting would be grounds for it. However, I think you would be on dodgy ground if the comment is just that they are 'getting smashed' (as you wrote in a previous thread). Regardless of whether this is written the night before they come to work, if when they turn up they are not obviously drunk, look presentable and do their work competently then what they have done out of work time is not really your business.

 

I think you will find it is counter productive to become too heavy handed over this matter, when what you need to be doing is trying to get them to take more pride in their work and the setting in general.

[Guest babyjane31]

I to have had issues with facebook within my setting, this was due to parents asking staff to be friends which the staff did not feel comfortable with as they felt they could not then be themselves whilst on facebook!!. I have therefore written a policy that states parents should not contact staff via facebook and given them our email address if they need to contact us out of hours as i check email often. Where genuine friendships exist of course the staff have them as friends on facebook we all work and live in a small village so lots of the parents are friends. I would not dream of insisting they delete any of their friends on facebook but this policy just gave some clear guidelines and gave staff the option of being in control without fear of offending any parents.

[Upsy Daisy]

That's a good point, babyjane31.

 

I can see that staff would not want to offend parents by refusing to add them on Facebook but might feel that it's a little like taking work home. Facebook is a strange arrangement whereby we ask people to decide whether to be friends with us. I would never approach someone with so little subtlety in any other arena.

 

I think that the way you approach the matter is both supportive and understanding and I'm sure that your staff are appreciative.