Manpower recently published results of their Employer Perspectives on Social Networking Survey, 2009, wherein they asked 34,000 employers worldwide to assess the effectiveness of their social media policies, and the degree to which employee use of social media has negatively impacted the organization’s reputation. Below are a few findings from the study:

1. Only 3% of employers with established social networking policies reported that the policies were not effective.
2. 63% of employers said that their policy was most effective in preventing productivity loss (see Chart 2 below).
3. 29% of employers stated that protecting their reputation was the most effective result of the policies; however, only 4% of employers worldwide said that employee use of external social networking sites had negatively impacted their organization‚’s reputation. 89% of the 34,000 employers said that employee use of external social networking sites has not had a negative impact on their organization’s reputation.
4. One-third said that policies helped to protect their organization’s intellectual property and proprietary information.
5. 14% indicated that policy helped their recruiting efforts.

First, I notice that very few organizations have experienced any negative impacts from employee use of social media (see Chart 1 below).

Chart 1: Responses to the question, “Has your organization’s reputation ever been negatively affected as a result of employees’ use of social networking sites?”

Second, this survey shows that most organizations are still focused on risk mitigation in their social media policies. (see chart 2).

(In Chart 2, the bars do not sum to 100%. Instead, they give a visual cue regarding total relative effectiveness of policies by global region.)

Chart 2: Responses to the question, “In which of these areas has your policy been effective?”

As I explained in Tips for Scaling Social Media Policies need to evolve beyond mitigation to differentiation.

I’d love to see this survey run again with the following questions added:

• If you do not have a formal social media policy, why not?
• Do you train your employees on effective and safe use of social media?
• To what extent do your organization’s leaders use social media in ways that demonstrate safe and effective use of social media? In other words, to what extent do your executives lead by example?

Finally, when designing your social media policy, remember that policies are not the most important action to take. Leadership, training and culture are equally important and should be designed and managed as equal parts of any social media operating strategy.

Manpower publishes their research on their Research Center, and this research report is linked through the social media research database on this web site.

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Chris Boudreaux leads social media strategy and measurement efforts for large B2C and B2B brands. Follow Chris on Twitter, or email Chris to continue the conversation.