Utilising the social media and organisation policy (someop) framework: an example of organisational policy development within a public sector entity

Organisational policy development is vital for the effective business operations. Polices are developed and applied to specific areas or applications within the organisation; such that they are sited within an organisational context. Evidence suggests that the development of policies for general employment conditions, (for example, electronic mail usage), tends to be highly structured and provide little flexibility for their implementation. Standard organisational policy development is about applying a set of rules in the workplace. However, when implementing social media in an organisation, the standard policy development processes are not effective in allowing organisations to benefit from the available social media tools. Social media tools have the advantages of offering the organisation flexibility and rapid dispersion of information within the online environment. Hence, organisational policy development for social media usage needs to take these characteristics into account. There is a perceived gap concerning the development of policies for social media usage, as traditional organisational policy development enforces structure and rules that are at odds with the ways social media tools work in the organisation. To fill this gap, we have proposed the Social Media and Organisation Policy (SOMEOP) framework, created to allow organisations to build policies that take specific social media advantages or issues into consideration. By combining key components, such as legal issues, and social media ethics, this framework demonstrates effective and efficient development of social media policy. This paper highlights the processes involved for a public sector entity when developing a social media policy using the SOMEOP framework, and describes the application of the framework within the entity.