I’ve been thinking about the courage it takes to blog in today’s employment environment.
Most companies treat their employees like a product. The act of managing an employee becomes wrapped up in a broader ‘brand management’ strategy. The old way of building an employee/employer relationship is gone. Your leadership team and your supervisors are risk-adverse and they stifle innovation and creativity in the workforce. They avoid treating you like a human being out of a fear of litigation and brand erosion.
What’s worse is that you can’t be yourself, even when you are at home and off the clock, because you’re never off the clock. You can’t have a life that is separate from employment because you are always employed, even when you’re shopping for groceries or at the park with your kids. Employment is a privilege, not a right, and anything you say can & will be used against you in the court of Human Resources.
Our HR colleague, Jenn Barnes, took a risk when she outed herself on her blog. How will future employers respond when they google her name and find out that she likes cats and she enjoys reading. (Uh, really, she’s low-risk. I’ll vouch for her.) Will they understand that Jenn, aka HR Wench, has an online persona that only represents a small portion of her actual life?
Jenn’s situation reminds me of Chez Pazienza. He was a CNN employee who was fired for blogging. His story has been featured on Gawker and Huffington Post. He recently came across a memo from CNN that outlines new employee rules for blogging and posting on the internet. It’s (very poorly) written by the Standards & Practices department.
***NEW CNN POLICY REGARDING PERSONAL WRITINGS ONLINE***
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all traditional “journalism” outlets have this policy. i read the NYTimes memo telling employees they can’t have political bumper stickers. the whole thing’s a crock — making people pretend they don’t have opinions when they are some of the most passionate, opinionated people in the world!
I like it that people are giving opinions and that’s fine. What I have an issue about is blogger hiding their names. In Jenn’s case, I understand why she want to conceal her name, but others want to be anonymous because they’re too afraid to stand up for themselves and use a different identity to not get in trouble. Last year, the Washington Post fired a Metro reporter who use an alias as “Christmas Ape” on Kissing Suzy Kolber.
I use to work in the media for HR and I understand these guidelines. There was a story last year that many journalists have donated money to their political parties. The only reason they have these guidelines is the company be objective on any political issues and they don’t choose sides. Of course, that’s a load of bull now since networks and other media outlets are partisan to whomever their choosing.
It’s still a good policy, but when the media is getting bigger, it’s tough to police everyone and this is where the big media companies are heading.
OMG I could not read it further after the first paragraph. The grammar and punctuation almost made my eyes bleed. Was the original version written in Sanskrit and then the translation into English outsourced to some company operating out of Romania? Because that’s how it reads. If this person is responsible for S&P communications, he/she might want to go back to his/her other day job.
Wait I have another one:
Makin’ Amerikuh look stoop-ed: UR DOIN IT RIGHT
Completely over the top. Is someone really going to think that the political views of CNN
@cols “I don’t have an opinion. I have health insurance and a 401k.”
@TracyTran Media companies should know that the best policing is done by an external source — not an internal policy. That’s where checks & balances come into play, and telling an intern that he can’t have a public opinion is a stupid ‘check.’
@ICANHASLINDA COMMON SENSE & GRAMMAR: THEY WUR DOIN IT WRONG!
@Corey Agreed. Everyone has a mask. I act a different way around my family than I do with my husband. If we can’t trust our employees with a little common sense, they shouldn’t be working for us.
So I can safely interpret this as those who work for a news outlet are not allowed to go to campaign functions, express opinions on ANYTHING CNN does cover, would cover in the future, might cover if they decide “hey so-in-so is blogging about this, let’s cover it” or whatever. And if you do blog about something like that, you are SOL because it’s in the employee manual that is hopefully not written by the same people who wrote this memo.
(I think those are the two most running-on sentences I’ve written in some time. Must be the memo getting to me.)
My company has a Guideline for Social Media, as they put it. It’s not bad, certainly not anything like CNN’s, and they offer tips on how to be an effective blogger. How many policies have that? And yet I’m still anonymous.
that cracks me up!
i’ve never blogged anonymously. then again, i’ve never actually spoken about the company i worked for. i’ve never talked about specific people or even identifiable events about where i worked.
what bothers me is the increasing blurring of the lines between professional and personal life. if i work for you, there are definitely expectations of my conduct and behavior, especially at work. but there is also a line where my life is my own and just because i work for you does not mean you own me.
i can understand that a news organization wants to do all it can to keep at least an appearance of objectivity. but this really is going a bit far. (and we’re all smart enough to know that this objectivity doesn’t always exist anyway.)
and yeah. this is yet another reason for me to add to my list of reasons to be glad to be out of HR.
all the best!
deb
@kellyO I’m with you. No opinion, no expression of thought, no vocalization on anything covered by CNN. You can’t even express how you feel about a squirrel on water skis? Seems redonkulous to me!
@hrMinion I can’t say that I blame you for being anonymous. I think it’s a personal decision to out yourself. Lance had excellent thoughts on his blog, the other day.
@deb It might be another reason for you to stay out of corporate america and continue to be your own boss. You set your own hours, you have your own rules, and you blog. It’s the best of everything!!
Also, I just want to say that there’s room for a common sense blogging policy.
This piece of shit policy from CNN is not it.
This is the most ridiculous policy I have ever read in my life. It goes against human nature.
What does CNN NOT cover?
Well, now we know why I and almost everyone I know will never, ever consider working for CNN (and they *are* right down the street from me!)
My rule of thumb with employees ask the following questions:
**Are they sharing information about the company?
**Are they doing something illegal?
**Are they blogging against the company?
**Are they letting people know they work for the company?
There are other questions to ask, but companies do need to let employees have their own lives. Employees need to have commonsense.
Pat
@Pat Agree 100% on common sense.
Interesting choices. Without rules, chaos.