the IBM Blogging Guidelines
Tags :Blogging
Ed showed off how IBM posted a "Blogs Go to Work" section right from the homepage. This in turn linked back to the IBM Blogging Guidelines. While it refers to when IBM started the wiki internally (around 2005) to discuss the guidelines, it doesn't say when the guidelines were officially established. But my point is some of the areas they cover have moved from random employees having a website, into main managers and executives that are even asked to document parts of their job and daily lives. I appreciated one section right away:
"Managers and executives take note: This standard disclaimer does not by itself exempt IBM managers and executives from a special responsibility when blogging. By virtue of their position, they must consider whether personal thoughts they publish may be misunderstood as expressing IBM positions. And a manager should assume that his or her team will read what is written. A blog is not the place to communicate IBM policies to IBM employees"
They are referring to a legal disclaimer that should be placed at your posting (or site) to let readers know that your opinions are not IBM's and are your own. I know I don't have one on mine. I think this gets into an interesting point about management of user activity outside of work. While using your employe's hardware to serve up a blog, in the logical sense, shows you are representing the company. Using outside hosting shows you are your own person, to an extent. IBM captures this by giving guidelines that state you should not negatively discuss or promote confidential information customers, the employer or co-workers directly in your postings.
I try to follow that theory in my blog postings. But what I am thinking and asking you, is how many enterprises have a blogging policy? There was Internet use policies, email use policies and some are now getting smart and introducing IM usage policies. So now we move into blogging and podcasting policies. How many of you are prepared to write guidelines around these new areas of technology?
UPDATE: Humorously as soon as I posted this I found this article like 5 minutes later on how lawsuits not only ask for emails anymore, but all forms of corporate and employee data, including blogs and even PDA's.
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On Thursday, October 19th, 2006 by Chris Miller
