Sharing Company Secrets: Can you trust your Engineers on Social Media Networks ?

Image Courtesy of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Is it a good idea to have our engineering department be active on social media? That’s what Thomas asked me lately.

Thomas is a hardware circuit design engineer. I’m just calling him Thomas. It could be any engineer.

He had just followed one of the training sessions I organized around the increasing need for change towards a digital, social and content oriented company.

I’m into the bad stuff

“Very interesting stuff, Tom”, he said. Maybe the first hour a bit too much marketing stuff for him as an engineer, but still.

But that’s not why he came to me.  He said : “Usually social media is all about the good stuff. But we engineers (support engineers, hardware developers or software developers), we’re also into the bad stuff: we actually fix problems! For some of us that’s even a full time job.”

Should he be active on Social Media if all he does is fix problems? And can you trust the guys on social media networks who sit on our intellectual property and secret roadmap information? Read more