Using Social Media in Employee Training At Your Credit Union

Today’s blog comes courtesy of Christopher Morris, Manager of Communications & Web Resources for CUNA Councils.

Using Social Media in Employee Training at Your Credit Union

A few weeks ago I was presenting at the CUNA HR/TD Council Conference about social media and its relevance to credit union HR and training. A key part of my session was based on how to incorporate social media into employee training. It’s an often overlooked area and once you dig in, the possibilities are limitless only by your imagination (and perhaps an imperious IT department).

Here are a few ideas:

• Train Your Staff on Social Media – What is it? How does it impact the credit union? If a member comes in talking about credit union info on Yelp or Foursquare, what are they talking about? Aside from the benefit to your credit union, it’s good for your employee’s personal and professional development as well. Even an hour slipped into your next all employee staff meeting will go a long way.

• Discuss Your Social Media Policy – First, create one. Then discuss it with your staff so they understand it (many might misconstrue it as your policy limiting what websites are accessible at work). Many of your employees have Facebook pages, blogs or some social media presence and if they list your credit union somewhere within it, a good social media policy is a necessity. Your employees are brand ambassadors – remind them.

• Discuss Privacy Settings on Social Media Sites – This is related to the first two points, but warrants a separate discussion because it not only affects your CU, but your employees’ reputation as well. Remind your employees to check and regularly monitor their social media profile privacy settings (on Facebook for example). They need to continually ask themselves, “Who am I representing here?” and “How visible is this?” when posting information.

• Show Credit Union Videos from YouTube – Sure, you can show new employees your stale PowerPoint slide or photocopied handout on the CU difference…or you can show Larissa’s snappy two-minute YouTube video. I was glad to hear more and more CUs are going this route. There is a wealth of relevant videos you can show including the BankerSpank spots, Difference between CUNA & CUNA Mutual (yes, that’s me), A Brief History of Credit Unions, and many more.

• Discuss Recommendations on LinkedIn – This is more related to human resources than training, but it’s important. Consider this: An employee is terminated from the credit union. A few weeks later, he asks some former colleagues to write a recommendation on LinkedIn, which they do (either because they don’t know the nature of his leaving the CU or they were friends, etc). Could that be construed as a reference? Make sure your reference check policy includes LinkedIn and employees understand all references must be screened by HR. At the very least, whatever your policy is regarding LinkedIn, it should be consistent and everyone must be on board.

• Explain Security Risks – This is the main reason many CUs ban social media sites entirely. However, if you do give employees access (and you probably should – for HR and marketing at the very, very least), they need to understand the security risks involved.

What else did I miss? How do you use it?

Christopher Morris is Manager of Communications & Web Resources for CUNA Councils. He blogs regularly at the newly created CUNAverse at http://cunaverse.com.