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Social Media Guidelines

For BC Public Service Employees

Social media is a part of life that continues to evolve. These guidelines will help BC Public Service employees make appropriate choices when using social media for personal use and understand the impact of these choices in the context of their employment and the BC Public Service values.

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Social Media Guidelines

For BC Public Service Employees

Why These Guidelines Were Created

Purpose and Scope

Social media is a part of life that is not going away and continues to evolve. These guidelines will help employees make appropriate choices about the use of social media for personal use both in and out of the workplace and understand the potential impacts of its use in the context of their employment.

There’s no new policy in these guidelines: the guidelines’ purpose is to alert BC Public Service employees to key considerations, as public servants, when using social media for personal use to ensure conduct remains in keeping with the Standards of Conduct and other already-existing policies and guidelines.

History

What’s the Same – Making Thoughtful Choices

What’s Different?

What Do These Guidelines Cover?

Other Guidance on Social Media

History

From Facebook to LinkedIn, Reddit to Ravelry, Instagram to Tinder, @Work to Glassdoor, social media use plays a role in the personal lives of many BC Public Service (BCPS) employees. In 2010, the BCPS was the first public service in Canada to provide guidelines to employees for professional use of social media, the GCPE Guidelines for Government Use of Social Media by Public Service Employees. Since then, social media and the ways we use it have evolved, and the guidelines for official government social media use have been updated. This set of guidelines, the Social Media Guidelines for BC Public Service Employees, was created as a companion to the guidelines for government use, to address the many other uses of social media where employees need to consider their obligations as employees of the Province of British Columbia. Social media is a part of life that is not going away and continues to evolve. These guidelines will help employees make appropriate choices about the use of social media for personal use both in and out of the workplace and understand the potential impacts of its use in the context of their employment.

What’s the Same – Making Thoughtful Choices

Public service employees make thoughtful choices every day, for example about how to interact with colleagues, talk about work outside the workplace, and share information. When it comes to social media activity, the obligation to make those thoughtful choices remains the same. As public servants we must comply with all employment-related obligations at work and outside of work. These include standards for workplace behaviour, privacy, confidentiality, conflict of interest, serving impartially and political activity as outlined in Standards of Conduct for Public Service Employees – Human Resources Policy 09, the Oath of Employment, and HR Policies (e.g. Discrimination and Harassment in the Workplace – Policy 11); standards for the Appropriate Use of Government Information and Information Technology Resources; the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA); and the Election Act. The BC Public Service as the employer must comply with legislation that regulates workplace behaviour, such as the BC Human Rights Code and WorkSafeBC legislation.

The obligations in these policies and legislation apply to social media use, including employees’ personal accounts unaffiliated to the workplace. Just as the Standards of Conduct apply to employee conduct outside of work, so they apply to social media use outside of work. Employees shouldn’t speak out at protest rallies using their public service job to lend weight to their opinions – nor should they be doing that on Twitter or Reddit.

What’s Different?

At the same time, what we say and do online is different in some key ways: for example, it can reach bigger and broader audiences, and the steps we take to restrict audiences for our online activity are different than simply looking around to see who’s within earshot. Other differences to consider are:

how quickly and easily words and images can be circulated, and reproduced as “soundbites” out of context;
the long shelf life of online activity (extended by sites like The Wayback Machine);
how fast social media platforms and how we use them evolve – e.g. privacy settings; and
diversity in how people use and think about social media as a way of connecting with others.

What Do These Guidelines Cover?

There’s no new policy in this document: the purpose of these guidelines is to alert BC Public Service employees to key considerations, as public servants, when using social media for personal use to ensure conduct remains in keeping with the Standards of Conduct and other already-existing policies and guidelines.

This includes using social media:

During the work day for personal use;
Outside of work hours on your own computer or device (off duty conduct);
About work (posting about your work or coworkers on your personal social media accounts);
In potential conflict of interest situations;
When using work equipment (e.g. social networking using your work-issued computer or cell phone);
Where employees face harassment or bullying online because of their employment; and
On workplace platforms like @Work.

Other Guidance on Social Media

For guidance on using social media for work on other topics, including guidance on stakeholder engagement, record-keeping, collection of third party information, and copyright, refer to the GCPE Guidelines for Government Use of Social Media by BC Public Servants.

As social media and how people use it evolves, so will these guidelines.

Scenarios to consider

Scenarios can help us think about putting policies, legislation, and guidelines into practice in how we use social media. Consider the following scenarios – Where might these hypothetical employees get themselves into trouble? What choices are they making that may not serve them well in the workplace and as employees of the BC Public Service?

If you’re unsure of what might cause problems in these scenarios, review the sections of the guidelines that follow, review the policies and guidelines referred to in these guidelines, talk with your supervisor, and consult the additional resources on the Social Media Guidelines for Personal Use page on MyHR, including the Scenarios for Discussion.

a hand holding a smartphone with active text messaging

Here but not Here

Paul feels strongly that it’s important to be responsive on his personal social media accounts, and when his phone goes off, he checks it and responds pretty quickly. Even in a meeting, if it’s something quick, he’ll respond. He always gets his work done, but other people on his team have noticed and don’t always think he’s paying attention or being courteous.

a laptop showing a post with frowning emojis

Passion and Posting

Jeanine is a passionate anti-poverty advocate. On her personal Facebook page, she posts criticisms of what she sees as her ministry’s inaction. Her profile identifies her as a “sometimes reluctant employee of a certain very large BC government ministry.” She also posts angry comments in response to BC government ads and press releases.

a hand holding a smartphone showing a group of like, heart and message icons

Facebook Marketing

Jin has a side business and uses Facebook and Instagram for marketing it and responding to questions. She sometimes does this on work time and when she’s called in sick.

a clock face half filled with like and heart icons

What’s Keeping Lee so Busy?

Lee isn’t always able to turn work around in the timelines her colleagues are hoping for, and they’re sometimes frustrated. When they notice that social media sites often show up on her monitor when they walk by, they start to wonder how much she’s actually working on work time.

a smartphone with a social media comment containing frowning and negative emojis

Gary’s Frustration

Gary is part of an ongoing investigation about a complaint he launched about another employee, and he’s frustrated with the lack of results. He starts venting about his frustration on his private Facebook account, sharing details he shouldn’t. Some of his Facebook friends are also work colleagues and one of them notifies Gary’s supervisor about the posts.

a pair of hands using a tablet to browse social media with icons indicating the user is both viewing and sending email

Overeager Oliver

Oliver is connected with his colleague Kim on social media and sees some photos and exchanges between her and other friends that make him think Kim is in a conflict of interest with the activist group she’s part of. He takes screenshots of her photos and exchanges and sends them to his supervisor as a heads up without first determining whether or not it is appropriate.

a smartphone with a social media post that offer a hint towards breaking news

Hint, Hint

Harley uses Twitter frequently, tweeting under the name “Harlequin.” In a recent series of tweets, Harley posted about being proud of a briefing note they wrote about options for assessing cannabis impairment and then hinted about an upcoming press release on the topic.

a smartphone with a series of hearts over a social media post

I Heart Your Photo

Bryan “likes” all of the posts on Instagram that show his colleague Jill in them, and sometimes comments on the photos being nice photos of her. He also responds whenever something new is posted. Jill has noticed this behaviour and is starting to feel uncomfortable.

Want to learn more?

Ask yourself

When you use social media, consider the questions below. They will help you apply the Standards of Conduct and other policies to your activities in the workplace and outside of work.

Questions about impartiality, loyalty, political activity and separating your personal and work interests

Questions about the impact your activities may have on your work and on others in the workplace

Questions about confidentiality, using social media on government equipment or posting images of your work or colleagues

Political Expression, Public Dialogue and Public Service Impartiality

As a public service employee, how you engage in public dialogue on topics such as political parties and government policy has to take into account some special considerations because of the Oath of Employment and the Standards of Conduct.

Your Responsibilities

Making Public Comments – Some Tips

During an Election

Quick links to resources

Legislation, policies and guidelines include, but are not limited to:

Standards of Conduct for Public Service Employees – Human Resources Policy 09
Oath of Employment
Appropriate Use Policy
WorkSafeBC
Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA)
The Core Policy Objectives and HR Policies
BC Human Rights Code
For guidance on using social media for in an official capacity, rather than for personal use, consult the GCPE Guidelines for Government Use of Social Media by Public Service Employees.