In the first of a new series focusing on business issues, Karen Walker, director of the Children's Place, explains how her nursery group is striving to maintain confidentiality.
When is it acceptable to socially network with friends, and when does it become a problem for work?
We have many staff who like to talk via their social networking sites. Not a problem, you might think - sharing plans for holidays, photos from a good night out, photos from a day trip with work ... but now maybe that is a problem?
We see increasing numbers of staff who use their social networking site without understanding the implications of sharing too much information. How appropriate is it to add parents, whose children attend the nursery you work at, as friends to your site? If those parents ultimately have a complaint or there is an incident at nursery, how much of the information on your site might they wish to use if they feel they have to take the issue further?
If you read a colleague's information on their site and you think it is inappropriate, what do you do with that knowledge - report it? Where is the line between private and work, if people put everything about their lives on their social networking site, including their work issues?
These are some of the concerns facing nurseries that employ many caring staff who like to chat and share information with friends. How safe is that information? How do we ensure we are meeting our duty of care within the safeguarding children remit?
Children's Place is considering its response to this issue. It is a major concern to the company that we may have a member of staff who is using information that is part of the business, yet is sharing it on a site to which we have no access unless we take the step of 'becoming a friend'. As a result, we have brought our nursery managers together to create a policy on social networking sites. The company's terms and conditions of employment have to be adnered to, to ensure that all staff are aware of the implications for them if they should choose to share information on their social networking site that might be considered sensitive.
It is a matter of gross misconduct if a member of staff should share information that might:
- Question their safeguarding commitment to children
- Breach confidentiality
- Bring the company into disrepute.
A rule of thumb might be: if I write it on a social networking site, is it something I absolutely would be prepared to say in front of anyone? If there is any hesitancy with that answer, then I recommend it does not go on.
Somehow we need to find a happy balance between sharing the pleasure of working with young children and watching them discover and explore their world, with remaining professional at all times and ensuring that the children in our care and the colleagues we work with are never put into vulnerable positions by anything we might put on a social networking site.
Next month's business development column (18 February) will be written by Sarah Steel, managing director of the Old Station Nursery group.