Hello,
I need a sounding board from reasonable, like-minded people professionals please.
A new marketing colleague who bas recently graduated has asked me to share the names and start dates of new recruits so they can share them on our socials. The new recruits would range from finance personnel to labourers in the factory. The latter environment having a higher turnover.
It’s in my dna not to over share when it comes to employees. I also think publishing about a new recruits (at all levels) is reasonable as an internal announcement but is it really necessary to tell the world of LinkedIn? I understand senior-ish roles but where do you draw the line.
Is it my place to kick back on this or do I just provide what’s been asked and let marketing do their thing? Fyi, I’ve already asked them to make sure they gain written consent before taking and sharing pictures. Some of the new recruits are young apprentices so I reiterated the importance when it comes to them too.
So, AIBU to say no, I’m not sharing the details of all new employees, and I think it’s a bit overkill for the socials anyway?
TIA
No, you're not being unreasonable, your marketing colleague appears to have got carried away. Push back
I would suggest you and your marketing colleague/team to agree a proper strategy on employer branding activities like this. As you say, senior level appointment announcements on socials make sense, but these should also be tied in properly with key business messages. Getting volunteers from different roles and levels from across the business to provide profiles can be good branding, but make sure they are genuinely happy to volunteer and are not being unduly pressured (and having people with some experience talking about the workplace is better than a brand new starter who may not get through their probation period).
There is also the argument that when you turn your focus away from customers and posting nice pictures of John or Jane from Finance is turning away from customers, you are not going to increase sales, boost profits margins etc.
Ego centric marketing is amazingly popular on social media, what seems to be lacking is robust evidence of this increasing profits.
First, no, as others have said, you're certainly not being unreasonable.
But I do understand where your colleague is coming from. It's quite common to have minor clashes between marketing and HR when it comes to what we share and how we share it. I most often see this when I'm asked to get marketing input on internal communications about things like restructures or new people programmes.
This conflict often arises because their priority is to *communicate*, whereas mine is to *comply*. I am wise enough to recognise that I need their input because actually communicating is important, but I do sometimes get the sense that they see compliance as, at most, something to be tucked away in the small print where it can't interfere with their drive for relentless positivity.
Whilst I don't necessarily think marketing staff need to understand the technical distinctions that mean that using words like "redeployment" needs to be avoided unless you really mean it (a conversation I have had more than once), I do think that, in many ways, marketing needs to know things like the Data Protection Acts even better than we do, because their work is subject to so much external scrutiny, particularly in a world of social media. Photography, video and audio as well as the obvious things like names are the meat and drink of marketing, and they really should be educated on their proper and legal use as much as they are on the relative merits of a serif versus a non-serif font in your press release.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I think your boss needs to talk to their boss about updating the marketing team's Data Protection training.
