Social Media Policy

Social media policy

SSS Education Group Ltd operates a social media policy to govern the use of this media within the Company. It is essential that service users in our care have our full attention at all times and social media can be a distracting technology.

This policy sets out how employees must behave with regards to social media and applies to use of personal and company accounts. It equally applies to use during the working day and personal use on non-Company computers, in personal time.

Policy aims
This policy applies to all employees, contractors and volunteers who use social media either for personal or professional reasons.

Social media can involve communication between job applicants and employees and is an avenue for the Company to promote and control their reputation. Social media may blur the boundaries between what is home and work. Access is often public, even amongst a limited group of connected accounts, and comments are often permanent.

Employees should be honest and respectful when using social media. Everything posted on social media may be tracked back to the source so employees must ensure content posted on social media accounts, both in a work and personal capacity, fits with the Company ethos.

Using Social Media
Employees, contractors and volunteers in charge of service users must keep a personal communication device close to them during any delivery sessions. To avoid distractions, the device must be secured in a suitable place where they will not access it during the delivery of any sessions in which they are responsible for the health and wellbeing of service user(s).

Such devices must not be used to take images of any service users unless with the express prior permission of senior management and the parents of the service users.

If you use social networking and video sharing websites and blogs, you must not, at any time:

Write about your work for the Company or its clients, unless expressly authorised to do so by a senior manager.
Conduct yourself in a way that is detrimental to the Company or brings the Company into disrepute.
Allow your interaction on these websites or blogs to damage working relationships between employees and/or clients of the Company.
Include personal information or data about the Company’s employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or clients without their express consent as this would be a breach of Data Protection legislation and to do so would be a criminal offence.
Criticise, argue with or make any derogatory, offensive, discriminatory or defamatory comments about the Company, its employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, clients or competitors, even if they are not named but the Company believes they are readily identifiable.
Make any comments about the Company’s employees that could constitute unlawful discrimination, harassment or bullying.
Post images of any service users, your workplace or any images that are considered by the Company to be inappropriate or links to such content.
Disclose any trade secrets, confidential or sensitive information belonging to the Company, its employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or clients or information that could be used by one of the Company’s competitors.
Use the name of the Company to promote products or political opinions.
Breach copyright or other proprietary interest belonging to the Company.

When contributing to your personal social media, you must clearly state that any views expressed are your own.

You must remove any content considered offensive or otherwise unsuitable by the Company immediately upon request.

You must be security conscious and take steps to protect yourself from identity theft, for example by placing your privacy settings at a high level and restricting the amount of personal information you give out. Please remember that social networking sites are a public forum, even if you have set your account settings to restricted access, you should not assume that your entries will remain private.

Social media content attributable to you which breaches the terms of this policy, or the other related policies, may result in an investigation and disciplinary action under the Company’s disciplinary policy.

Company Social Media Activities
If you are authorised to contribute to the Company’s social media activities as part of your job role, you must adhere to the following rules:

Keep the Directors informed of your current passwords and log in details.
Use the same safeguards as you would for any other type of Company communication in the public domain.
Ensure that your communication has a purpose and benefit for the Company and conforms to the Company’s brand guidelines.
Obtain permission from your Manager before embarking on a public campaign.
Request that your Manager checks and approves content before it is posted online.
Follow any additional guidelines given by the Company from time to time.
Ensure the Company’s social media accounts are operated for business purposes only.

Social media and recruitment
Recruitment processes are increasingly utilising social media as a method of engaging job-seekers. Due to the increasing amount of content posted online, viewing candidate’s social media profiles is a quick and effective way of checking details contained in a CV or getting an idea of the personality of the candidate.

The Company permits reviewing the social media profiles of candidates for recruitment purposes. This review must be carried out in accordance with the Company’s policies and code of conduct. Accessing of the candidate’s profile page may be disclosed to the candidate during the recruitment process. Where information is discovered that makes the candidate unsuitable for the position, the candidate will be notified and they will be entitled to make representations about the information and their unsuitability.

Business contacts
Details of business contacts obtained during the course of an employee’s employment are considered confidential information and remain the property of the Company. Business contact details includes the contacts records in computer software installed on an employee’s computer as well as maintained in third party websites including social media.

Business contacts may not be added to personal social media accounts during the course of your employment. If any are, these must be removed upon termination of an employee’s employment. Business contacts may be added to corporate social media accounts. A separate record of business contacts on social media should be maintained within the Company, updated as and when the contacts are added.

Policy enforcement
Using social media to refer to or notify business or personal contacts of an employee’s new employer will be seen as an attempt to solicit customers or poach staff and may result in civil proceedings being brought against the individual.

Using social media in a way which breaches this policy will result in such content being removed from corporate accounts and the employee’s authorisation to use corporate social media accounts on behalf of the Company being suspended and removed. Such content may be damaging to the Company or employees and may lead to disciplinary action under the Company’s disciplinary policy, which may be serious or gross misconduct.

The Company reserves the right to check the social media accounts of employees.