Tips for Training Managers and Supervisors

1. Share your internal IM survey findings with managers and supervisors before making them available to the rest of the staff. Fill managers in on the risks inherent in, and the costs associated with, inappropriate IM use. Managers who are themselves responsible for departmental hiring, training, and budgeting will appreciate the financial loss and productivity drain risky IM use represents.

2. Be sure department heads know how to identify an IM business record, and what steps to follow when retaining or deleting an instant message. Managers and supervisors should fully understand, and be able to communicate clearly, the role staff plays when it comes to identifying and retaining IM business records.

3. Explain the penalties for IM policy violation. Let managers and supervisors know what role, if any, they play in IM policy enforcement. If department heads are expected to identify, discipline, or terminate employees for violating IM policy, let them know.

4. Most employees are concerned about themselves first, the organization second. When training employees, managers should focus less on organizational risks, and more on penalties for employee noncompliance. Employees appreciate clear direction on what they need to do and what they should avoid doing in order to comply with IM rules and policies—and keep their jobs.

5. Treat employees fairly and with professional respect. Assure employees that they will not be disciplined for IM abuses that may have occurred prior to the development of the organization’s rules and policies. Tell employees, however, that with new rules and policies in place, they now face disciplinary action, up to and including termination, for IM policy violations.

6. Enforce IM rules and policies consistently. Make an example out of one policy violator today, and you may avoid terminating a department full of rule breakers tomorrow. An added benefit: Your ability to demonstrate a clear and consistent pattern of enforcing written rules and policies in court may support your defense argument. ^[8]

^[8]Nancy Flynn, The ePolicy Handbook, New York, AMACOM, 2001.