Blogs: No substitute for personal communication and trust in the workplace

PR Week published a pretty good piece about policies and guidelines for employee blogging last week. The article includes much of the type of counsel and advice on why companies should have Yahoo and Employee Engagement practice: [...] Hannegan says that most employees will exhibit common sense when blogging. "For the most part, employees aren't stupid," he says. "They know if they post confidential information, they'll get in trouble for it." [He] notes that employees are less likely to blog about frustrations with the company if there is another outlet for their frustrations. So facilitating greater employee-manager communication might help alleviate a staff member's need to vent on the web. This is a an excellent point to think about when considering all the elements about enabling employees to blog. It highlights a fact about organizations and relationships in the workplace - if you provide people with an outlet to express themselves in an environment where such outlets don't exist already or are not trusted, the new outlet you provide (in this case, blogs) will likely be used in unexpected ways that don't bode well for their nurturing and development, nor for good employer-employee relationships. And remember one crucial thing. Like any other communication tool used by employees, a blog is no substitute or surrogate for the personal communication and trust that must be built and maintained between employees and their direct managers. It's a relationship that takes some work and requires the willing and active participation of all parties. Christopher also says this in the PR Week article: [...] One of the reasons employee blogs have garnered so much attention as a PR tactic, he says, is that employees bring more credibility to the public than a CEO or top-level executive. "People are more likely to identify with [bloggers] if they talk like a regular person," he says. It's a good point, although I don't think you can say sweepingly that "employees bring more credibility to the public than a CEO or top-level executive." If you were to say "employees can bring more credibility to the public than many CEOs or top-level executives," then I'd be more comfortable. Links: Reader Comments... Neville Hobson is the author of the popular Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: