Facebook at Work for Work Policy

• Be proficient.  
  • If you do not understand how to use Facebook go through the Facebook 101 Training.
• Be respectful.  
  • Observe copyright, privacy, confidentiality rules and other applicable laws when publishing on Facebook.
• Be transparent.  
  • Disclose that you are a Nebraska VR employee and be clear about what your role and accountabilities are; 
  • Disclose only publicly available information.
• Be a listener. Keep in mind that Vocational Rehabilitation is participating in social media to learn the following:
  • Who: Who is talking about us? Who needs our services? Who are our stakeholders?
  • What: What are our stakeholders saying about us? What are we doing well? What can we improve upon?
  • Where: Where are conversations happening about us and our services?
  • When: When are people talking about us? After a bad experience with us or before they need us?
  • Why: Why we need to connect with clients, advocates, providers and each other?
• Be goal oriented.
  • Improve communication among Nebraska VR staff across the state.
  • Improve communication with clients, providers, businesses, and other partners.
  • Share information about Nebraska VR to:
    • Increase referrals.
    • Increase YouTube views.
    • Increase traffic to fan page.
    • Increase fan page "Likes"

• Be active.  Social media requires engagement and participation for it to add value to the organization. Commit to a few minutes each day to review posts and to post your own updates.

• Be timely.  Social media allows us to share information instantly with a world wide audience. With that comes an expectation of timeliness. Be prepared to respond quickly to developments and announcements with relevant information. Accurate "bite sized" information delivered when it is needed can be more valuable than a full report after the fact.

• Be aware everything you do online can and will live forever. Remember anything you share within social media is not private. It can and will be copied, shared, stored, and spread worldwide. Don’t post anything online you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on a news media web site or on the front page of the newspaper. Think before you post.

• Be a commenter. Offer comments on relevant posts and share the good work of others using your Facebook profile. Using social media includes sharing information of interest to the disability employment community and our partners. When commenting on fan pages, be sure to indicate who you are, your role, and your affiliation with Nebraska VR. If you see a post that you think requires or would benefit from an official Nebraska VR response or Fan Page posting, please contact Sarah Chapin.

• Be a valued community member. - Do share Nebraska VR posts and the best information you find from trusted sources outside of Nebraska VR. This will ensure you are a valued member of the community.

• Be part of the conversation. Social media requires comments to be social. Expect, accept, and respond to comments. Some comments may not be positive. Respond to negative comments professionally and provide additional information necessary to resolve the issue. Consider taking the exchange off line when appropriate. 

• Be professional. For avid social media users, it can be tricky to balance professional and personal social media presences. Content for your personal friends is most likely not appropriate or of interest to the disability employment community.  You are required to:

  • Keep content about your non-work life on your personal page.

• Don’t be a cyberslacker. Limit the time you spend using your Facebook to what is necessary to post content, review, and monitor comments. While engagement in an online community is valuable, there is such a thing as spending too much time on social media. Remember we are here to help people find jobs.

For Facebook at Work for Work Accounts.

Send an email request to your Office Director with a paragraph stating how you plan to use Facebook at work for work.

The supervisor's approval reply should be copied to Sarah Chapin

 Go to https://www.facebook.com to create Facebook account for work at work using your work email account. 

Make your Facebook account compliant according to the following:

Upload a profile image of yourself. 

Download the following image to upload as your background image. (Control click and choose "Save Image As..." to save to your desktop.)

 

Next, navigate to settings on the right of the blue navigation bar.

Click "Edit" by username. Change your user name to be first_name.last_name.vr.ne.  This is meant to help distinguish your account from a personal account and identify you as Nebraska VR staff. Note the username is the same as your timeline address. 

Edit Name with your first and last name.  Use the link "Add or change other names" to add Nebraska VR to your profile.  This will appear below your first and last name on your profile page.

From here navigate to "Privacy".  Set your activity for futue posts to Public.  Please match your Settings on How People Can Contact You to match the ones identified in the image below. Keep in mind we are using this tool to connect with people!

Now, click on your first name in the blue navigation bar to go to your timeline.  Then click on "About" to navigate to the Overview screen. Click on "Work and Education".

Work and Education - You are required to add Nebraska VR as your workplace and set the viewing options to public.  You are welcome to add details about your professional skills and education.

Places You've Lived - Include your Service Office city only.

 

Contact and Basic Info - Enter your work phone, Service Office address, our external website, and add/edit birth day to keep your birth year private. Do not add who you're interested in, your religious views or political views. 

Family and Relationships - Do not complete this section.

 

Details About You - It is required that you write an "About You" paragraph.  You may choose to add "Favorite Quotes".

Life Events - You may add life events under "Work & Education" only.

 

 

Using LinkedIn at Work for Work

All VR Staff may use LinkedIn accounts at work for work. See the "Steps to Create a LinkedIn Account Checklist" in this chapter.

Background of Nebraska VR Social Media Inititiatives

Adopting the practice of using social media to interact with each other, clients, businesses, and other partners to build an online community around the topic of disability employment began as a direct result of service office staff member requests. In 2011, a Social Media Workgroup was formed from staff across the state to explore, develop, and discuss social media goals, content, and suggestions for use.

Reasons to Use Social Media Identified in 2011

Clients, potential clients, advocates, and service providers are online. People online are talking and we should be part of the conversation. Consider when someone doesn't have an answering machine and you want to reach them. Think about how that affects you when they lack a standard of technology. There are many other compelling reasons to use social media. Here are just a few:

For all:

• Engage with rather than feed messages to colleagues, clients, partners, and fellow citizens
• Listen to what people are saying about VR
• Reach people in specific relevant niches
• Attract talent

Staff Members:

• Integrate technology and increases internal communications and functionality. 
• Display our commitment to serving people who experience disabilities.
• Change required in the way we do government business due to changes in economic environment.
• Social Media involvement was requested by staff, rather than something mandated from the top.

Clients:

• Find new clients through relationships with current clients and business relationships.
• Be transparent by allowing clients to get to know Vocational Rehabilitation better.
• Contribute to the community as an expert and connect with people looking for answers in your field of expertise
• Learn what is important to our clients and respond to the knowledge into business processes.
• Be present where clients are as they expect and demand consistent customer service across industries.

Partners:

• Learn something about our partners and form connections.
• Become a resource to our partners
• Take networking to a new level

Issues and Barriers Identified in 2011

While most of the feedback regarding Vocational Rehabilitations proposed venture into social media was positive, some staff have some concerns. It is important to acknowledge these challenges as an important part of social networking and sharing of ideas. Feel free to comment on the following snapshot of those concerns followed by a response for each:

• Resistance to change. 
  Response: Change is inevitable in the world we live in today and we, as VR employees, need to be willing to make the technology changes in order to keep up with the times. Facebook is where people are connecting with each other and we need to be willing to take that initiative to join them. We might miss out on making a connection with clients who need our services in their comfort zone.
• Risk of disseminating inappropriate comments.
  Response: Official information about opportunities and events will be published on the VR Fan page. See Guidelines for VR Facebook Fan Page. As far as individual status updates, the same professional and confidentiality rules that apply to you off line, apply to your activity online for work at work. See Facebook Guidelines.
• Online safety and security.
  Response: The only people who can see what you post are people you are connected with or your "Friends" as Facebook calls them, so online safety and security is generally well protected and if done properly, it should not be too much of a concern. Additionally, Facebook offers information about security and safety. See http://www.facebook.com/security and http://www.facebook.com/safety
• Would need training on how to set up and use Facebook and LinkedIn. 
  Response: Training is available for both Facebook and LInkedIn online.
• Lack of participation or timely status updates. Would grow stagnant due to inactivity.
• Response: There is always a lot going on with Nebraska VR. Certainly enough for two or three updates in a work week. This is an ideal way to share good ideas, job leads, and share Nebraska's best kept secret. Status updates including how VR works, it's unique services, links back to our fan page, information about what there is to gain with employment, sample interview questions or words of encouragement to clients or fellow employees who may deserve recognition.
• Lack of basic understanding for social media novices.
  Response: Staff should read the materials, guidelines and checklists included in the wiki and the links to outside training and resources. This is new to all of us so we will all learn a lot along the way. In addition, once you start using these social media sites on a regular basic, you will most likely find them to be very user friendly and you will catch on very quickly.
• Concern that we might lose our professional position with clients if they see us as a "friend" on Facebook. Need to maintain professionalism on facebook and continue to make distinction between friend and counselor/client relationship.
  Response: Participation in social media at work for work is optional for VR staff so those staff members who are uncomfortable using social media can opt not to participate. As far as the Facebook term "friend" it is a matter of semantics. You can be Facebook friends and not be friends as it is just how the software identifies a connection. 

The intent is to build a community around a common interest and to increase awareness of Nebraska VR. To create a collaborative environment where our clientele (clients and the business community) can offer real and immediate feedback and will allow VR a method of directly responding to any comments or concerns which will increase our customer service and build/improve our relationships with clientele. To give VR a face so that we can erase the mystique and taboo of working with our agency while creating a living breathing internet community.

Social Media Definitions

Social media integrates technology and social interaction by sharing the written word, images, audio and video.

Blog, shortened from 'Web Log', is a site usually maintained by one person, with regular entries of personal commentary. If you are a blogger and you blog you may use templates like Blogger or Wordpress. A corporate blog often has posts from mulitple individuals.

Wiki is a website that allows collaborative development by a community of users. Allows any or many users to add and edit content.

Linkedin is a business-oriented social networking site primarily used for professional networking.

Video sharing sites such as YouTube, provide online space for people to upload, view, share and rate. Vocational Rehabilitation uses YouTube to share news and information.

Facebook is a social networking site where users can join and create networks organized by city, workplace, school or region. Connet and interact with others by posting messages, commenting and upload photos.

Podcasts are audio or video recordings of events or commentary often in a show format. You can listen on line or new episodes automatically download to your MP3 player or computer.

Twitter is a microblogging service. Users send, read or reply to others text updates on the web from mobile devices. A maximum of 140 Charachters per tweet makes it fast paces so messages spread quickly.

Forums are online discussion sites where interest groups form around topics. People help each other by providing advice and tips. Google and Yahoo groups are examples.

RSS Feed commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication, is a format used to publish frequently updated works such as headline news, blogs etc.

Some other internet words...

Spam is sending indiscriminately to large numbers of internet recipients.