Enterprise demands spur growth

Many people believe that some of this growth in smartphones and the mobile apps that make them smart can be attributed to the growing expectation of employees to use them in their work environment. As they are clamoring for their employers to provide devices with the latest features, IT departments are faced with having to support an ever-widening spread of platforms.

Read Gilman's previous column “Get Visual With Video” about developing an integrated marketing plan that includes what prospects see, hear and read.

While the enterprise infrastructure is being stretched to the limit, the demands on management to get the “biggest bang for the [mobile] buck” are forcing many to drive the workload well beyond the conventional workplace. And why not—what does the “mobile” in mobile smartphones mean? Now employees are becoming “untethered” from the office like never before.

Sure, we've had telecommuting employees for years, but that's not what we're talking about here. Whether you are a 9-to-5-er in the office 5 days a week, or travel 50 percent of the time for work, everyone is plugged in 24/7. If your employer gave you the mobile phone or tablet and emails, calls or texts you over it, then they might be in for a surprise.

I've written a lot about the need for agencies to leverage social media to heighten their brand awareness, presence on the Web and for the marketing and sales value of it. I've written a bit about the potential for liability exposure should an agency principal misuse a person's social media history in the potential hiring or firing of an individual. But here's an issue that has a good news/bad news duality to it.

Liability exposure

First the bad news: If you supplied the mobile phones to your employee and they are injured as a result of using it, you could be open to a work comp claim and lawsuit if others were involved, regardless of where it happened. Worse yet, if your employee is one of the millions of drivers that insist on texting or reading emails or talking on the phone while behind the wheel and are in a serious accident, you could be open to a huge lawsuit.

Far too frequently we hear news stories of terrible car accidents that resulted from a driver being distracted by their cell phone. That's at the core of 34 states banning the use of text messaging for all drivers; nine states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving; and some states including Maine, New Hampshire and Utah consider cell phone use as part of the larger “distracted driver” issue.

Related: Read Rick Gilman's “Social Media ABCs”.

The exposure comes into play when the distraction is work related and a loss occurs. While it may seem clear that the employee shouldn't have been conducting business in such a manner, without a defined and clearly communicated company policy on the use of mobile devices, especially those provided by the employer, the company could still be facing significant liabilities.

Studies show that claims made by workers injured while performing tasks loosely connected to their work are on the increase and the growing use of mobile devices is defying the conventional ideas of work-related injuries. Companies can begin to mitigate the exposure by developing a corporate policy for using mobile devices, making sure all employees are aware of it and that managers don't violate it by making staff use their devices in unsafe environments.

Opening new markets

The good news is, for every business exposure there's a potential insurance protection. This is a new workers' compensation exposure that gives us an opportunity to design new products to protect our business clients against such losses.

Talk to your carriers and see whether they have any coverage that can protect your clients. At a minimum, educate your commercial accounts about this risk and help them manage it. It doesn't matter the size of the business; the risk is very real and can be very large.

But exposure to a physical loss outside of the office that employers have little control over is only one issue that companies—and agencies, for that matter—should worry about. In some ways, even greater damage can be done to a business if the content going out over social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook is out of control.

Uncontrolled liabilities

How often have we heard in the news about some YouTube video or tweet that hit the Internet and sent shockwaves around the country? Remember the Dominos Pizza YouTube video of two employees that thought it would be fun to spit on the food of a customer? It immediately went viral and the Dominos brand tanked almost as quickly.

While that is an extreme example, every day businesses are struggling to have some kind of handle on the social networking content their employees are sending just to try and monitor what's being said internally about their company.

Related: Read “Was it Good For You?” by Rick Gilman.

At the same time, agencies, like many small businesses, are striving to find the right way to leverage these very powerful tools. Over the past few years, many companies have popped up offering agents “content in a box” (my term) for putting out insurance information on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Other vendors have developed guidelines and best practices for managing the use of social media and still others offer training.

Recently, I came across a new company that combines all three services along with in-depth analytical analysis. Hearsay Social, the 2-year old, San Francisco-based social media management platform for the insurance industry, gives employees complete freedom to “post like crazy” (as its website describes) while letting the company continue to protect its brand and keep compliant from a regulatory perspective.

Think global, act local

Hearsay Social provides companies with a central dashboard to monitor and archive messages; you can distribute marketing campaigns and measure the results on both corporate and local levels.

From a compliance perspective, tracking and accessing issues apply to social media content similarly to how they apply with email; it's potentially discoverable in court. Monitoring and archiving conversations helps to eliminate concerns with FINRA and SEC regulations.

Because Hearsay Social sits on top of social networking tools, distributing content suggestions and campaigns to other agency locations or producers out in the field is easy and end users can tailor them to their local markets and one-click post to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, keeping brand identity consistent across the enterprise.

Geared more for the large corporation with many locations spread out across multiple markets, Hearsay Social targets insurance companies and banks, including several in the global Fortune 100 arena. Insurance agents, on the other hand, wouldn't likely fit the model for being a direct customer, but are the ideal end user when their carrier is concerned about brand consistency and compliance across the enterprise.

Because all business owners should be concerned with what's being said about their companies by their staff in the social media space, finding solutions that leverage technology, define a clear policy and effectively communicate and implement a solid program of staff training is needed to transform the potential liability into an asset.

If you're a captive agent looking for help with social networking content development and/or monitoring activities, talk with your carrier. Hearsay Social might already be working with them. Check out its website and Facebook page to find a couple of case studies there with Farmers Insurance Group and State Farm that will give you added insight as to how their solution works.

If you're an independent agent, contact Heresay Social directly; it may have solutions that are scalable and can provide your agency with the tools to become compliant, content-rich and aware of how its brand is perceived across the social media landscape. If that doesn't work, look for other solutions that might support similar controls. In either case, don't let the progress of social media in your business plans become a runaway train.