What can a business do to protect itself from these risks before they blossom into a major problem?
With respect to social media, create policies regarding your company’s own social media pages in the form of social media terms of use for third-party users. As it relates to employees, you can’t have someone policing every employee’s online activity to see if they’re saying something negative, but you can adopt a comprehensive employee social media policy to set forth your expectations for employees’ online content. This can be accomplished by modifying your employee handbook.
With respect to online transactions, companies need to update their terms and conditions to ensure that they are complying with whatever type of international law may apply. If you’re selling goods over the Internet, U.S. treaties can be substantially different from traditional commercial law that you’d normally understand to apply to an interstate contract. You can frequently opt out of these treaties, but you have to make sure you’ve done it properly.
Finally, you need to ensure that if you’re entering into transactions electronically that you’re incorporating those terms and conditions into your transaction, and we can help you do that.
How can businesses stay ahead of the curve as technology and society cause changes to the way they do business?
The best way is through planning. If you’re going to expand your business into a new market or a new technology, talk with your advisers to make sure that everything you’re doing is compatible with those new technologies and markets.
A lot of planning can be done up front by working with your attorney and your accountant. You wouldn’t go into business in Brazil and not familiarize yourself with any accounting requirements that might apply. So if you’re going into business in Brazil via online transactions, you need to look at the legal ramifications, as well.
Continue to review your policies on a regular basis as technology and markets continue to change. If you put a social media policy in place a couple of years ago, it might not account for things like Twitter or other new technology, and terms and conditions might have become outdated as you move into new markets.
Donald R. Scherer is an attorney in the Business Services Group at Stark & Knoll Co., L.P.A. Reach him at (330) 572-1317 or [email protected].