Social Media and Security - Are Your Team Members Video-Capture Ready?
Are Your Employees Ready for the 10:00 News or Trending on Social Media?
Surveillance technology is everywhere. According to a recent Safety.com study, it is estimated that the average person in America is captured on a camera nearly 33 times a day, not to mention the number of times people are unknowingly being recorded on the mobile phones of strangers. You might even argue in an abundance of caution that people should assume their every act is being recorded. This is a very good thing in many ways, as visibility and transparency increase accountability. People are much less likely to commit crimes or behave badly if they believe they will be caught, and crimes committed on video (surveillance systems and phones) have led to countless identifications and convictions of guilty parties.
All that being said, this blog addresses the risks associated with ever-present video cameras – because nearly anything that can be used for good can also be used for bad. It’s important to look at the dark side of our video-capture-crazed culture when managing risk associated with a security practice.
Perception is an All-Too-Common Substitute for Reality
Combine the prevalence of video capture and edit devices in the hands of nearly every person with the unfortunate truth that perception, no matter how skewed, is an all-too-common substitute for reality and you’ve got a potential recipe for disaster. It only takes mere seconds of video played on the 10:00 news or social media to trigger sometimes destructive knee-jerk reactions, ruin a career or damage a brand.
Fair representation of all the facts isn’t part of the equation in these situations. These drive-by video captures:
Rarely if ever provide critical context,
Aren’t adequate in telling the whole truth,
Are void of many important nuances and subtleties,
Don’t provide important background or possible agendas of those involved, and
In the worst cases, may have been edited by people with agendas for the specific purpose of max social and media impact.
This isn’t to say that video isn’t important in preventing and solving crimes, just pointing out that video is only part of the whole story and can just as easily be used for malicious or manipulative purposes as for preventing and solving crimes.
Video Posters Benefit Greatly from “Bad” Behavior
One more unfortunate fact is that there is a small number of people who actually make a practice of intentionally setting up situations and instigating conflict to elicit and record an “orchestrated bad response.” There is value in capturing people who are or appear to be behaving badly, so naturally there will be people who capitalize on the opportunity. These people aren’t interested in truth or fairness, they are on a mission to post videos that get lots and lots of views. Maybe they are on a mission to feed a movement without regard for people they use and hurt along the way. Maybe they are on a mission to specifically target and damage a certain brand. Regardless of the intent of these types of bad actors, adult, respectful, responsible behavior doesn’t make for lots of views, likes and reposts. No matter what’s going on, security officers should be trained to and focused on de-escalation and respectful handling of the situation. Bottom line, merchants of gotcha-videos are in the business, literally, of generating said gotcha-videos. To deny that this is true leaves your security program at higher-than-normal risk.
Once it’s Been Posted and Perceived, it Won’t Ever be Totally Unperceived
While capturing and sharing potentially defamatory videos may later be found to have misrepresented facts, breached privacy laws, may not be admissible in a court of law, and in cases of manipulative editing would be considered immoral and unethical as well as illegal, that’s little consolation to the people or organizations whose reputations are forever tarnished by the release of these videos. Again, perception has the power to trump the facts, and does so quite often. For this reason, it’s critical that your security officers diligently and intentionally consider how their behavior might appear on camera and do everything they can to avoid being drawn into any type of confrontation or exchange that could easily be misconstrued or misinterpreted in a negative manner.
Making Sure Your Officers are Ready – Prevention is Everything
Private Security Companies should invest in preventative awareness training to avoid having to defend their employees’ actions to the public or customers when faced with potentially inflammatory or easily mis-construed videos – or worse, feeling pressured to terminate a good employee whose behavior was supported and justified by the facts when those facts appear inconsistent with a video-generated public misperception. This isn’t about protecting bad behavior – which should always result in appropriate consequences - rather it’s about encouraging and teaching good behavior. It involves doing everything possible to ensure that good employees are consciously and constantly aware of how their behavior might be perceived and teaching them to behave in ways that would be difficult to misinterpret. Raising the awareness in your team members that they are likely being recorded will go a long way towards ensuring that they are only captured doing the right things.
Training and Awareness is the Key to Prevention
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and could save people their jobs and save brands their reputation. Make sure you have training in place for your security officers that covers the following topics:
Social Media and its Role in Company Culture.
Employees as Brand Ambassadors, Whose Behavior Represents the Company.
The Power of Public Perception.
Awareness that Employees are Nearly Always on Camera/Assumption that Every Interaction is Being Filmed.
What to do when someone is filming? Media vs. Public.
How to avoid getting manipulated or goaded into bad behavior or reacting badly.
How Certain Common Actions will Likely Be Viewed by the Public – Good and Bad.
When Perception and Facts don’t Jive for a Captured Video.