HR Generalist and Social Networking Policy

We have hired you as an HR generalist for a semi-large multinational corporation that has been resistant to the trends of social media over the last few years. Management is giving you the opportunity to make the case for the use of new tools to help improve the organization (i.e., recruiting, communication, corporate culture). *If there is something that you feel strongly about, please check with the instructor.
Creating the policy: The 7 key questions
We should draft a perfect social networking policy that needs to cover new media using only a few words: “Be mature, be ethical, and think before you type.” Ultimately, you may decide that such brevity is what you want for your business. For the sake of completeness, though, here are the seven most important questions to ask yourself when drafting a social networking policy.
How far do you want to reach? Social networking presents two concerns for employers—how employees are spending their time at work, and how employees are portraying your company online when they are not at work. Any social networking policy must address both types of online use.
Do you want to permit social networking at work, at all? It is not realistic to ban all social networking at work. If you do this, you will lose the benefit of business-related networking. Further, a blanket ban is also hard to monitor and enforce.
If you prohibit social networking, how will you monitor it? Turning off Internet access, installing software to block certain sites or monitoring employees’ use, and disciplining of offenders are all possibilities, depending on how aggressive you want to be and how much time you want to spend watching what your employees do online.
If you permit employees to a social network at work, do you want to limit it to work-related conduct, or permit limited personal use? How you answer this question depends on how you balance productivity versus marketing return.
Do you want employees to identify with your business when networking online? We should make employees aware that if they post as an employee of your company, the company will hold them responsible for any negative portrayals. Or you could simply require that employees not affiliate with your business and lose the networking and marketing potential social media offers.
How do you define “appropriate business behavior?” Employees need to understand that what they post online is public, and they have no privacy rights in what they put out for the world to see. We can use anything in cyberspace as grounds to discipline an employee, no matter whether the employee wrote it from work or outside of work.
How will social networking intersect with your broader harassment, technology, and confidentiality policies? Employment policies do not work in a vacuum. Employees’ online presence—depending on what they are posting—can violate any number of other corporate policies. Drafting a social networking policy is an excellent opportunity to revisit, update, and fine-tune other policies.
General Guidelines:
You may work with 1 other student (not mandatory). If you work with one other person, each student needs to submit an Executive Summary before the intro (in Word Format). Make sure both your names are on that final. (if you fail to turn in an Exec Summary you will have half of the assignment grade deducted).
The Exec Summary is a mandatory part of the assignment. If you work with a partner, you only have to turn in 1 Exec Summary, if you work alone you have to turn in 1 Exec Summary.
The document should be in the following format. Page one is the executive summary, the 4 pages should cover the policy and the last page should be citations for a total of six (6) pages.
Double-spaced, using 12-point font, Times New Roman.