How do you overcome legal obstacles to social media programs?
Many companies seem to have legal departments that put up huge barriers to adopting communities and other social media programs that include employees, customers, prospects and even detractors. In fact some put up barriers so high that nobody can do anything in the space. Now, if your competitors cannot find a way to overcome those objections either, you may be ok, but if they do and manage to extend their business processes to leverage the power of the internal and external crowds, it may be “game over.”
Typical legal objections include the issues related to brand protection, engaging hourly workers as part of internal communities, the threat of liability for what employees say in public, having employees socialize online instead of doing work, meeting regulatory compliance requirements, and more. While most legal departments will claim that their situation is very unique, at the end of the day the issues are fairly common among many companies.
I do not think that there is one best practice on how to overcome those objections. Some companies find it easier to get legal involved upfront in the process, while others are asking legal to quantify the risks and then balancing those with the benefits or the risks of doing nothing. One good bit of common sense (as recommended in this BT case study) is to make sure that you do not overhype what you are trying to do and position it as something radically different from other programs. Many companies already have policies in place that cover things like email communications and acceptable behavior in public forums – which could possibly be extended to virtual environments without too much change.
What have you found to be working?
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October 6th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
It’s simple: The CEO and CMO tell the legal dept. what they want to accomplish and what tools they want to use. The legal department is asked to come up with policies which a) enable these strategies and tactics, and b) protect the company at the same time.
Chief executives who hide behind the legal department or allow corporate lawyers to dictate what they can or cannot do aren’t leading their companies, they are just managing the status quo and the safety of their position.
The only way to overcome the legal obstacles when they arise is to get a company’s leadership to buy into the opportunity offered by new media tools.
Having a game plan for the legal team to review wouldn’t hurt: Show them how the other guys do it.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Great post.
I went through this recently with my legal department. The way I won them over is bringing them up to speed on the business objectives, successes other companies I have had, my personal blogging experience, policies we should set etc.
You need to take a lead in educating them – they want to do the right thing as well – present your case, the business benefits, give them examples of blogging policies from companies such as those from IBM, Microsoft etc. and make them feel at ease that you are not breaking new ground here.
Point them to good resources that they can read upon. In short, help them to help you.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
In any case, would you actually agree that legal threats from companies towards unhappy customers is one of the worst thing to adopt, especially in such an environment where we are liberating the exchange of information and experiences?
One thing that I observed on many occasions, the best way is still interaction on an open platform that highlights the company’s ability and willingness to undertake responsibilities over their words. Sometimes, the response is secondary and all their customers look for is accountability.