Develop a corporate blogging policy

There are few golden examples of corporate blogging policies that provide employees useful and necessary guidance on what they can blog about and how they should do it as it relates to company information.

Sun Microsystems logoSun Microsystems stands out as a company that actively encourages their employees to engage each other and the wider tech world in conversations about Sun’s products. They also lay their blogging policy out in clear, understandable language.

Common sense at work here; it’s perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it’s not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces. There’s an official policy on protecting Sun’s proprietary and confidential information, but there are still going to be judgment calls. […] There are all sorts of laws about what we can and can’t say, business-wise. Talking about revenue, future product ship dates, roadmaps, or our share price is apt to get you, or the company, or both, into legal trouble.

I recommend reading the full policy. It’s not just a list of restrictions. Sun has also provided helpful tips to any employees interested in getting started blogging, but not really up to speed on the phenomenon.

IBM logoContrast Sun’s policy with IBM’s and Sun’s starts to look mighty folksy. IBM’s is much, much longer, less easily read and understood, and probably more difficult to follow for employees. If I were IBM, I would simplify. The best blogging is concise and to the point, and so should any policy governing it.

Some more examples:

The IBM policy is interesting though since IBM is now a consulting company and they handle client information as well as their own proprietary data, much like accounting firms.

Protect IBM’s clients, business partners and suppliers. Clients, partners or suppliers should not be cited or obviously referenced without their approval. On your blog, never identify a client, partner or supplier by name without permission and never discuss confidential details of a client engagement. It is acceptable to discuss general details about kinds of projects and to use non-identifying pseudonyms for a client (e.g., Client 123) so long as the information provided does not violate any non-disclosure agreements that may be in place with the client or make it easy for someone to identfy the client. Furthermore, your blog is not the place to “conduct business” with a client.

Accounting firms should be proactive about setting a blogging policy, and encourage their knowledge workers to embrace the medium.

The best place to launch a career

I’m knee-deep into my third year working as an auditor, and that means I’ve nearly met my experience requirements to call myself a CA. By my calculations I’ll qualify somewhere around January.

Over those 2+ years I’ve gained valuable experience working with clients in many different industries. The opportunity to learn is literally limitless, and it’s probably the best thing about the profession.

Each year BusinessWeek ranks the best companies for new college graduates, and this year the top three spots were occupied by three quarters of the Big Four. Deloitte is tops, followed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. KPMG finished a surprising 11th. Grant Thornton also made the list (73rd).

They are among the first to rethink how to recruit college grads, keep them happy on the job, or just keep them at all. Ernst & Young uses Facebook to let prospective employees talk freely with real ones. Deloitte will show a rap video about office life—made by interns—to give students a realistic view of the company. And PwC requires some bosses to get a second opinion on their evaluations of new hires to make sure the feedback is clear enough, the goals ambitious enough for kids who are uncomfortable with ambiguity.

Using Facebook to recruit better doesn’t necessarily make a place a solid career launch pad, nor would a rap video. (I think Facebook works a bit better. The video will probably alienate more people than it attracts.) Clear feedback and ambitious goals will make PwC a great place to launch a career because it will help new graduates get used to the work environment compared to university.

But it is the experience of working with a wide range of clients that is most valuable in terms of launching a career.

Banning Facebook sends the wrong message

Facebook office signJeremy Newman, the Managing Director of BDO Stoy Hayward in the UK, provides real leadership and an inspiration across the pond to me and no doubt others who read about his management style and philosophy. He writes about workplaces banning Facebook, which is very popular right now here in Toronto among employers.

I am not sure how effective this will be at increasing staff productivity – which is presumably the intended effect. To be consistent I guess they also need to ban personal telephone calls and emails during office hours. Personally I prefer to trust people.

That’s a breath of fresh air coming from someone in his position. I would expect the employees of Stoy Hayward appreciate being treated like responsible adults. From the comments, by “russell”:

Rather than banning things companies should look to understand what makes it such a powerful medium and explore opportunities to engage with employees through such social networking sites.

He’s on the mark with the sentiment, which some businesses have already taken to heart. Especially in the profession, where potential employees are already users, keen on new technology, especially when it helps them meet people and build relationships, and looking for something to differentiate between what are essentially different flavours of vanilla.

Banning any site sends existing employees the wrong message, and failing to leverage the social network will hinder the growth of the firm when it comes to attracting the top young minds entering the profession.

Canadian dollar flirts with parity this week

It’s pretty cool that the Canadian dollar reached parity with the US during trading this past week, because I wasn’t even born back in 1976, the last time we were there. To say there’s been a sudden upsurge in Canadian flag-waving is an understatement, but the increase is due to the greenback’s weakening, as the Post points out.

Over the past five years, the United States has been struggling with declining economic conditions, including crippling deficits, that have pummelled the greenback against a large number of major currencies. It did not help, either, that U.S. interest rates have been lower than most of the rest of the world, making the currency less appealing to investors who want yield.

All this results in weakened demand for Canadian exports, which puts a lot of pressure on Canadian manufacturers that depend on business with the US. The “declining economic conditions” mentioned above are also going to drive down demand from Americans for Canadian goods, so businesses here would do well to continue diversifying their customer base in other markets.

As for me, I’m going shopping in Buffalo.

Spreadsheets: My thoughts on EditGrid

I recently tried out EditGrid, in response to a post by Dennis on recent enhancements. I had already been using Google Spreadsheets a little bit, but not too much, because, quite frankly, it just wasn’t all that intuitive. I consider myself a fairly advanced Excel user, and Google Spreadsheets just didn’t have the same level of ease of use.

EditGrid screenI blogged about Google’s spreadsheets app before, but never from a personal point of view. I barely used the thing. I had a few random sheets up which I’d authored in Excel, but never really did much editing of them.

(Google Gears may allow one to use the application offline in the future. I think we may see more business usage when this happens. Currently Google Gears is offered for Reader only.)

So, I was open to other options. I’d already decided that I was going to move all my personal documents online, since I didn’t have anything all that confidential personally to protect. My financial data isn’t stored in Excel and if it was, I might be hesitant to upload those files.

I work with Excel so much for work, I thought it would be hard for a web app to make a positive impression on me by comparison. But right away EditGrid presented me with an interface that looks and works reassuringly similar to Excel. The top menu even has those familiar options: File, Edit, View, Format, Insert and Data!

EditGrid looks so much like Excel it is really easy for someone familiar with Microsoft’s spreadsheet software to jump right in and be productive right away, which is something I couldn’t say about Google Spreadsheets. Google succeeds in simplifying every piece of software it releases, but I actually think EditGrid’s strategy works better for what is still a pretty geeky type of software.

And it can’t hurt having some information not firmly in the clutches of Google.

Right now I think EditGrid is a more complete spreadsheet app compared to Google’s, but both still trail Excel in features and ease of use. I’m hoping they can close the gap sooner rather than later.