The Attention Company has released details of a poll revealing that people are surprisingly relaxed about sharing information over the Internet. The company speculates that since the Second World War, privacy has become commonplace leading to a sense of anonymity and alienation in modern society. The Internet and blogging offers an opportunity for people to rescue their sense of self, publish whatever they like, gain fame and recognition, and become ‘out there‘.
According to the poll, in addition to swathes of personal information…
“It is appropriate to share the following on a blog or website…â€
- Praise of your organization (72%)
- Events or activities in your organization that are already public knowledge (71%)
- Opinions about the performance of your organization (39%)
- Opinions about your competitors (33%)
- Events or activities in your organization that are not yet public knowledge (16%)
- Trade Secrets (8%)
Obviously, it’s the last four points that will make difficult reading for business leaders, and it’s hardly surprising that many regard employee blogging as a potential communications and legal minefield. If you have 1000 employees and 100 are bloggers, then 8 of those will be revealing trade secrets. Thirty-nine of them will be saying whether or not they agree with what you’re doing. Such frightening figures are liable to prompt knee-jerk anti-blogging rules to be imposed by many companies.
But rather than imposing some sort of heavy-handed code of silence, which won’t work anyway, the report concludes that organisations need to take on board these statistics as a ‘new reality’. They should recognise that there will always be critics seeking an outlet. However, if they work to turn these criticisms inwards and become more open as organisations, then the potential damage caused by these individuals could potentially become a strength. Companies might “use these tendencies to develop and implement new, innovative ideas”. Naked conversations in the company meeting, if you like.
That’s obviously the best-case scenario, but it’s also clear that there’s a bumpy road ahead. These secrets and opinions are already out there on the Internet for one thing and, the Internet being what it is, will remain there forever in search-engine caches and internet archives.
Via. John Koetsier
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shel israel
3 years ago
Naked Conversations would never advocate using a company blog to reveal a trade secret. However, there are lots of ways to discuss products before they are announced–writing about the work you are doing on them, what you are trying to do, etc. There are hundreds of such cases and most of them build credibility and word of mouth support for the product as it becomes ready for market.
Ian Delaney
3 years ago
Hi Shel. I’m not suggesting that they do, nor I think were the report’s authors. The idea I think they were suggesting would be to use these tools and platforms *internally* to capture the energy and desire for recognition that appears to drive employees to blog about these things in their own private time.
shel israel
3 years ago
Ian,
Sorry, I read through it too fast. How is the rest of Le Web?