Another interview following the publication of the NMC's new advice on social networking sites, this time in Personnel Today. This interview was an interesting departure. I'd expected to discuss the advice we've issued for nurses and midwives, but instead we spent a lot of time focusing on the role of organisations in setting proportionate policies that encourage responsible use:
Businesses warned to provide guidance on social media
Employers need to provide clear guidance for staff regarding the use of social networking sites to avoid inappropriate relationships, harassment of staff and the potential for disclosure of confidential information, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has warned.
"Increasingly, employers are facing issues as a result of the use of social media," said Andy Jaeger, assistant director of professional and public communications at the NMC. "They need to be encouraging responsible use and when issues do arise they need to take them seriously."
The organisation suggests that companies set out clear policies for staff regarding the use of such sites, including advising employees to keep their personal and professional lives separate as far as possible, upholding the reputation of their employer and profession at all times, and ensuring that they protect their own privacy by using settings available on sites such as Facebook.
Employers should also ensure that line managers are familiar with policies and issues, and make sure they treat any complaints from online activity - such as cyber-bullying or the sharing of confidential information - in the same manner as they would in the real world.
"If someone is harassing or bullying a colleague, doing that online doesn't make it any less serious than if it was being done face-to-face," said Jaeger.
The issue was particularly important where staff were in public-facing roles such as the NHS or teaching, he added.
"We're starting to see a small number of cases coming through which directly involve the use of social networking sites and employers are increasingly raising those issues with us," he said.
One recent example involved a psychiatric nurse who was struck off the register after contacting a former patient through Facebook and developing a sexual relationship with her, resulting in the patient self-harming when it ended.
"Particularly with regard to nurses and midwives, there are issues around relationships with patients and patient confidentiality," said Jaeger.
"Informal relationships with patients online just aren't appropriate. Social networking has made all of us easier to find so sometimes it's about clearly and kindly drawing some boundaries."
A further risk was disgruntled employees posting negative comments about their employer. "Where organisations are going through significant change, the fallout can happen in all sorts of ways and some of that can be online," he said. "Again, it's about having clear policies and thinking through how you can deal with it and doing so proportionately."
But companies should not look to impose a blanket ban on the use of social media, he added.
I've been doing a lot of work recently on how social media is used by nurses and midwives. As a culmination of this, I've authored updated advice for nurses and midwives on using social networking sites responsibly, and was interviewed by People Management magazine (for the second time in as many weeks!)
Nurses warned over use of social media
Social networking guidance is being issued to nurses and midwives by their regulatory body following an increase in misconduct cases relating to online activities and ethical code breaches.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) said it was publishing practical advice on responsible use of the internet – specifically Facebook – as there is “clearly confusion about privacy issues and the use of social networking sites.”
The guidance is also designed to give employers a steer on shaping policy related to staff internet activities inside and outside of work, and how to deal with internal disciplinary issues that arise from incidents occurring in the social media space.
The formation of advice for the UK’s 660,000 registered nurses and midwives follows an “influx of enquiries” and a series of misconduct cases centring on social networking sites, said the NMC.
Last year a male psychiatric nurse was struck off for an “inappropriate relationship with a patient”, after contacting a woman formerly in his care through Facebook.
The council also highlighted a case in the US where a student nurse became embroiled in a legal battle with her employers, after she was dismissed for posting a photograph of herself posing with a placenta to Facebook.
The regulator is warning nurses to use such networking channels responsibly and be mindful of unintentional breaches of patient confidently – as well as their own privacy. The guidelines suggest that medical staff keep their personal and private contacts, discussions and profiles separate.
“If your profession is nursing or midwifery, it is particularly inadvisable to discuss work issues online,” said Andy Jaeger, NMC’s assistant director of professional and public communications, and author of the advice. “What you regard as just an amusing story, could end up causing serious offence more easily than you think.”
He warned that personal content is often “unwittingly” shared across networks, adding: “Most people simply don’t realise how much information is shared with the world if you don’t adjust your privacy settings on Facebook – and that includes personal details and photographs.”
He also told PM that the guidance was being issued to help employers develop social networking policies, as current procedures were “inconsistent.”
“Nurses and midwives have reported that employers are not dealing with issues occurring on social networks with the same degree of seriousness – particularly around bullying, harassment and inappropriate sharing of content," he continued. “This guidance is about responsible use, and encouraging employers to investigate issues proportionately and seriously, rather than issue blanket bans."
As a graduate of Stonewall's Leadership Programme, it's a real pleasure to help out in promoting the course to future participants, and sharing my experiences in the workplace. A little while ago, I was interviewed by the lovely Hashi Syedain for a piece in People Management magazine. The complete article is below, and also on the People Management website. The interview with me is towards the end.
Diversity - the pink ceiling
Being openly gay shouldn’t be a big deal any more, yet many people still face enough prejudice to make them wary of revealing their sexuality. But the effects of not coming out can also harm career prospects.
"Organisations generally have become more diverse, but you don’t often see gay people in senior teams, just like you don’t see gender or ethnic diversity at top levels,” says David Shields, Stonewall’s director of workplace programmes.
Telling your workmates that you are gay can be tough: witness the brouhaha that surrounded rugby player Gareth Thomas, cricketer Steven Davies and Swedish footballer Anton Hysén when they each declared their sexuality. Sport may be an extreme case – Hysén is still the only openly gay professional footballer in the world – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy everywhere else.
Even if open homophobia in workplaces is less common than it used to be, gay rights group Stonewall argues that many organisations still operate with a “pink ceiling” – a more subtle barrier of prejudice that stops gay people getting to the top of their profession or causes them to hide their sexuality.
“Organisations generally have become more diverse, but you don’t often see gay people in senior teams, just like you don’t see gender or ethnic diversity at top levels,” says David Shields, Stonewall’s director of workplace programmes. Women or ethnic minority men may fear a double dose of prejudice, he adds, which means that lesbians or black men are more inhibited about coming out than white, gay men.
In other cases, people may be out to their colleagues but not their clients. ”Coming out isn’t a one-off event. It’s something that comes up every time you build a new relationship,” says Shields.
One of Stonewall’s initiatives for smashing the pink ceiling is a leadership course for mid-career gay professionals at Ashridge Business School. Among other things, the programme looks at authenticity and leadership.
“Good leaders have a strong sense of self-awareness,” says Albert Zandvoort, a management professor who teaches on the Stonewall course. Exploring authenticity can help gay people become more comfortable with their orientation and more open and honest. It’s not impossible to be a good leader if you are gay and not out, but it’s harder, says Zandvoort. “The personal stress will get in the way of being fully authentic. Honesty is a great thing and people respond well to it.”
The principle of a separate training course can be controversial, however, even among gay people. “I wouldn’t want any special courses for gay people. You treat them as an integral part of your workforce and if you think someone has been ill-treated because they are gay, you deal with it,” says Bernard Buckley, an ex-HR director and now an executive coach, who is also gay.
Even those who sign up to the course sometimes go with mixed feelings – although our case studies also show that gay people, even in broadly enlightened workplaces, face issues that most of the rest of the workforce don’t.
Case study: Lucy Bryans, EMEA operations manager, American Express Business Travel
“I wasn’t out until I was about 22. I took a gap year after university and went to New Zealand and Australia, where I met my first long-term partner. Getting a visa to work in Australia was my first big challenge as a gay person – we had to jump through all sorts of hoops to prove our relationship and could not get the same visa as a straight couple. That’s when I realised that there are barriers in life when you are gay.
“My first experience of coming out at work was at Trailfinders in Australia. I took a deep breath and told everyone on the training course, ‘I have a partner and her name is Cat.’ Trailfinders was a great place to work. It was no big deal, a non-issue. I made a decision then that I’d never be closed at work ever again.
“It’s very hard to come into work every day and not refer to your partner, to keep having non-gender specific conversations. I can’t imagine doing that – although I know people who have. My current partner did it for three months at one place, because some of the people she worked with were very homophobic. Then one day she said “my partner” and “she”. They sneezed, coughed and spluttered – and never mentioned it again.
“When I came back to the UK in 2006, I started working at Hogg Robinson. It was a more formal environment. In the main the experience was positive, but it was the first time I experienced anxiety. Certain people were a bit suspicious or said inappropriate things. The standard ones are assuming that you’ll never have children or asking, ‘Which one of you is the man?’. I deal with that sort of thing with humour and honesty because the minute you get defensive, people don’t understand.
“I’ve been more out with each job I’ve had. At AmEx, I found out about the Pride network when I joined and emailed them: ‘I’m new and I’m gay.’
“Last year we set up a mentoring scheme with the network and I have a mentor from that. She’s very senior and she’s not gay but she’s a strong ally of the Pride network. She was the first person to challenge me about whether being gay has an impact on how I am at work. I’d never considered before how I am always making split-second decisions about coming out many times each day. You want to be authentic, to be 100 per cent yourself with regular contacts – but it mustn’t become overwhelming to yourself or others.
“In some roles I’ve worked with people who had never come across a gay person. I thought, ‘I’m not going to hide it, but I’m not going to throw it in their face.’ You just hope that if you are genuinely hitting a barrier, you’ve got someone else to turn to. Not everyone does.
“When I first heard about the Stonewall leadership course I wasn’t sure about it. ‘Are we asking for separate courses now?’ I thought. ‘Really?’ But I had a very positive experience. The connection with the others on the course was an immediate peer connection – there was a lot of rubbish we didn’t have to go through. You quickly felt free to deal with the hard stuff, such as why you behave in a particular way and what impact your sexuality may have on that behaviour. I’d not experienced that freedom on a course before.
“I manage people from all sorts of minorities – hearing other people’s negative experiences makes you realise how others are feeling. There were people on the course who’ve had real challenges to overcome. I was amazed at how many people weren’t out with their clients. Some must have to listen to homophobic comments all day – so it’s really important to keep up the pressure. If you don’t, things can go backwards. That’s the point of networks. There are people in 2011 who are not progressing in their careers because they are gay. And that is not OK.”
Case study: Andy Jaeger, assistant director, communications, Nursing and Midwifery Council
"I came out in my early thirties, having spent most of my twenties living an outwardly straight life. At the time I was on the leadership team of a children’s charity with a Christian ethos. Overwhelmingly, the colleagues that I was closest to were incredibly supportive. So was the head of HR. No one was deliberately antagonistic, but long-term it was never going to be a comfortable fit. It was difficult. The charity ran 80 projects, 40 of which were church based. Having an openly gay head of fundraising… well, it was a bold decision.
“I now see a real difference in the kind of person I used to be at work. I was much more guarded about everything. I used to describe it as living an inch below the surface of my skin. It coloured everything. I wasn’t being true to myself. Living life as a whole person is important to my motivation now and my ability to do my job. You can’t connect with other people, or manage effectively, if you can’t be yourself.
“I stayed at the Christian charity for a year after I came out and then came to London to do a masters in marketing and communications. I was looking for a complete change and going to university was incredibly liberating. Of 20 people on the course, I was the only UK national. Being gay there was a total non-issue.
“After my masters I worked briefly for a housing association and then came here. This organisation has gone through a period of fairly rapid change and growth. There’s been high staff turnover. There are now 300 people in the organisation, compared with 220 when I joined five years ago. One of my challenges, when I was promoted to assistant director, was to make sure that across the organisation people are treated with respect and dignity – because as we’ve got bigger, we’ve realised that you can’t just rely on everybody knowing each other.
“I was quite skeptical about the Stonewall leadership programme – and I think many of the others there were too. We shared a sense as a group of having arrived, having made something of our careers. I had moved beyond thinking of being gay at work as a challenge. It’s a non-issue now, partly from a personal determination on my part to make it so. There are people who try to hide aspects of themselves, and on the flipside there are people who everybody instantly knows are gay. I make it a non-issue by making sure it’s not the only thing about me. People are much more interested in the fact that I sing in a choir or love sci-fi films.
“The Stonewall course wasn’t about being gay at work, it was about understanding yourself as a person and how your experiences have an impact on the way you do your job. There’s something very powerful in that, for anyone. Being gay, you are constantly making decisions about coming out. That gives you life experience of managing risk and perception. It makes you good at judging situations.
“As a result of my going on the course, we joined Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme and I set up an LGBT network. This organisation is already incredibly diverse in terms of race, disability and sexual orientation, so the network is a way of enhancing something that’s already good. The course also challenged my own expectations of gay people. I met bankers, accountants, people working for utilities – people I don’t come across in my social circle. It’s amazing the stereotypes we walk around with – and coming out doesn’t rid you of those, or of discriminating against people.”
The sense of relief and the fizzling away of tension that comes with launching a long project almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. And this web development project has been long. I got deeply involved in the project when it had been going for a year and it was stuck. Eight months later, we're live.
The website was developed for the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and I took a lead role in the information architecture, concepts and overall look and feel, as well as ensuring that my team, who will be responsible for it in the long term, took a lead role in content migration. Given the significant changes in IA, migration wasn't a straight transfer, but in many cases a total rewrite. And, now we're live, the whole thing is my baby to look after. Or beast to tame, depending on your point of view.
Just a few days since go live may be too soon to reflect properly on the project, but, based on my experience, here are my top ten tips for anyone embarking on a web development project for a large organisation:
1. Be clear about what you want to achieve
For anyone familiar with Prince2 project management, I'm not talking about having a good project charter. It's about having a coherent vision of where you're going and what it will look like when you do. There are no right or wrong answers to how you achieve that, but basically everyone involved in the project needs to be able to tell the same story. Frankly, we wasted some time at the beginning because it took a while to come to that share view of the world.
2. Get, and maintain, buy-in
In a world of stakeholders, everyone has something to say. Those opinions are fairly easy to capture at the start of the project, but if you are doing anything that's going to take any time at all, those people are going to change. For reasons that are too dull to go in to, this web development project lived through four chief executives. Maintaining buy-in was a significant challenge.
3. Put together the right team
Even a relatively simple website needs a range of specialist skills. Specialist skills come attached to people who might or might not get along, but the project won't work unless people see eye to eye. We were fortunate in having a team of people working for the project who (most of the time) got on, respected each others' opinions and worked well together.
4. Don't be a slave to project methodology
Understanding how to fill in the paperwork that goes with Prince2 doesn't make you a good project manager. It makes you good a filling in paperwork. Most importantly, you need to...
5. Get the right project manager
Ideally, this person will be obsessive in their devotion to getting the project delivered. Again, as with the project team, we were very lucky to find someone who could deliver.
6. Learn to compromise
I didn't get everything I wanted out of the website development. I still have a long list of things to do at some point. But by focusing on what we needed, rather than what I wanted, we got a new website. Compromise is a good thing.
7. Learn not to compromise
Compromise is also a bad thing. There's a fine line between having a vision and being stubborn, and I hope I stayed on the right side of that line. Most of the time.
8. Don't design by committee
In fact, don't do anything by committee. Participation is a good thing, and it has its place when you are pulling together ideas. But if at any point you think you might need to do something quickly (and you will), work out in advance who gets to decide what. It will save you from a world of endless meetings.
9. Nurture your talent
A project is a good opportunity to do things for the first time. If I have one big regret about the way the project worked out, it's that we didn't capitalise more on those opportunities, by giving key team members more of a chance to try things out.
10. Expect it to go wrong
Goes without saying really. But most of all, expect it all to go spectacularly wrong at the last minute, and make sure you have a good back out plan if it does. We didn't need ours in the end. But you never know.
I spent some time this afternoon rewriting the disclaimer information at the bottom of page three of the magazine I edit. It's that bit of the magazine that nobody really reads, but I decided to give it my all. Then had a slurp of coffee. Giggled to myself. And finally finished. It's not a masterpiece.
Several thoughts on disclaimers. Firstly, writing words to the effect that the views expressed in the magazine do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation does not change the reality that, for most of our readership, the views in the magazine are exactly the views of the organisation. Some people will inevitably take every word on page 12 seriously, even quotation from the mouth of an entirely independent commentator, and entirely ignore my little disclaimer. Much as I might like to absolve myself of some corporate responsibility in my editorial decisions, my readers won't give me the same latitude.
Secondly, it's hard to be funny. On the basis that few people would be committed enough to read them, I rewrote them with a humorous tone to reward them for their effort. Now I'm away from my computer and on the train home, I'm not sure I pulled it off. In any case, the world is overflowing with smug sounding marketers who want to make their widgets sound like Innocent smoothies, and I'm not sure I want to be one of them.
Finally, it's very easy to give too much attention to things that don't matter. The disclaimers, exactly as they were, were absolutely fine. I'll probably change them back tomorrow. So there's a little portion of my life I can never get back, wasted on something of no consequence. If nobody's going to notice, it can just be OK. And I could have left the office 20 minutes earlier.
DISCLAIMER: Please note that the views in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of Andy Jaeger.