When I’m out working with clients on either social media strategy or specifically LinkedIn I always seem to come across situations where the list of employees for a firm on LinkedIn includes former staff members. What’s disturbing about this is that many executives are aware of this but often fail to take action.
It’s been widely known that sometimes employees are slow to update their profiles to indicate they are no longer employed at a company – this might be for a variety of reasons not least pride as well as the fear that being unemployed will make job seeking that much harder.
Clearly there are risks associated with this – for both the employer and former employee. Most companies now have social media policies in place – but its clear we need to extend this as follows:
- The induction process needs to include a review of their LinkedIn profile plus an outline of how the new employee is to link to and reference their new employer plus an outline what is expected of the employee if and when they leave
- Exit procedures need to include specific mention of when an exiting employee is expected to update their profile.
This is smart for all concerned.
