Congratulations!! Your company was featured on TV! There was a great newspaper article about you! Your story went viral, and now people all over the world have looked at your website, are visiting your social media pages, are calling for product or services, and want more of your time, your employee’s time, and the company’s time. How do you handle all of the attention? Who decides what media gets attention, what employees are going to be available to media? Who responds to all the things on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIN and Pinterest? Big time exposure means big time commitment in all facets of your business, but none more important than how your employees handle the limelight.

Do you have a media policy currently in place? Can any employee talk to the press “on the record”? Can anyone post to your social media pages? These are important questions, and need to be covered in the employee handbook and reiterated in regular intervals throughout the year. If these issues have not been addressed in your company, do so immediately. It takes less than a day for a company to look really good or really bad, literally a “viral moment” for your company name to get out, and the press start flocking. It happened here in Indianapolis two weeks ago, when a small restaurant owner with a big heart gave directions and a lift to a kid walking ten miles to a job interview. He posted the story on his Facebook page, and 24 hours later, the story is international. Fortunately, they handled the press well, and for the most part have been able to handle the additional business well.

At Managepoint, we are the human resources department for hundreds of companies. We do payroll, training, administration and benefits. We help companies plan and execute their HR needs so they can concentrate on the moment their company goes big time!

You can read about the restaurant story here.