The Risks of Digital Communication
Jinfo Blog

By Bernadette John

Abstract

Bernadette John is an expert in digital professionalism. She explains why information professionals should be taking the lead in ensuring staff possess appropriate skills to be professional in the digital environment - and what can go wrong if they don't.

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The line between personal and professional lives is becoming blurred in this quickly evolving age of digital and social communication. So many of us now access and answer our business email on personal mobile devices outside office hours and update our status on social networks in the workplace. 

We no longer leave work behind at the workplace and there seems no slowing up of the steady stream of stories in the press which focus on staff being sanctioned by employers for social media faux pas in their down time. 

Information Professionals Taking the Lead in Digital Professionalism

As employers clearly have raised expectations of the workforce during their down time, it is essential that information professionals take the lead.

As the FreePint Topic Series "Best Practices in Information Skills Development" illustrates, information professionals have a role to play in raising issues with senior management and coordinating with other relevant teams across the business to initiate clear policy, relevant training and accessible updates in many skills, including the essential digital literacy required for "digital professionalism". 

The Subscription Article "Digital Professionalism Skills for the Workforce" goes into detail about how information professionals can help ensure that the workforce is fluent in this vital digital literacy, that appropriate levels of private and professional privacy are achieved both for themselves and their employers, and what can go wrong if digital professionalism is compromised.  

Unexpected Consequences of Online Actions

All online actions (not only the words and material consciously shared on social channels) generate vast amounts of data, collated, aggregated and accessed by various stakeholders, from advertisers to the security services and even cyber criminals and business competitors.  

A certain level of fluency with tech and social channels and insight into the risks of certain sorts of information sharing is required. This can range from opinions consciously broadcast on social channels, to confidential business sensitive data - including calendar appointments, contacts lists and locations - potentially accessed as part of the standard permissions granted to many popular apps.  

Reducing the Risks of Digital Communication

The ease of access to sophisticated tech via mobile devices makes it easy for people to fall foul of professional codes of conduct or even the law. Information professionals can help raise awareness of the risks of a lack of digital professionalism – and help provide the solution.  

Some examples of the information governance risks poor digital professionalism can create are:

• The incorrect use of copyrighted images

• Inappropriate or inadvertent broadcasting of business sensitive information over social channels

• The indiscriminate downloading of apps with wide-ranging and confusing permissions which may include the right to read and amend personal information or even download customer contact information.  

The Subscription Article "Digital Professionalism Skills for the Workforce" goes into detail about the skills required to be digitally professional, why it's important for workers and their families and friends to have these skills, and how training should go beyond use of social media to encompass set up of our devices and much more.

When budgets are stretched, it is increasingly apparent that senior level business leaders are more likely to be influenced to take action by the fear of things going wrong than by the promise of the benefits of improved information skills and digital literacy. 

Information professionals are perfectly positioned to highlight the risks of getting it wrong, taking the lead to provide the development centres for Digital Professionalism in their organisations. This is a clear route to elevate the importance of information skills and digital literacy within the organisation.

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