Page 12 - CIMA SCS Workbook February 2019 - Day 2 Suggested Solutions

SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

EXERCISE 2

Briefing paper

To: Vita Board
From: Senior Manager
Subject: Social media

Ethical issues

Vita has a duty of care to our employees to train them to carry out their job effectively. I do not
believe that we have achieved this in this instance. We must investigate if the claims made by the
Zita Fellaini are true, as she could be merely making an excuse for her poor behaviour. But if we
find out that other representatives were not fully informed or provided with sufficient guidance
regarding this initiative and that they have been overworked or not given appropriate guidance
and support, then this is lack of professional competence on our behalf.

Zita Fellaini did not act with the correct level of professional behaviour in her responses to the
attendees from her twitter account. She lacked integrity and objectivity in her responses and in
her manner of communicating to them. There is no excuse for these kinds of comments, whatever
the pressure she was under. It is certainly not acceptable, particularly as she carries the Vita name
in her twitter account. It appears to go against the principles outlined in our integrated report for
stakeholder engagement, we may need to update this to include social media.

From what you’ve said it sounds like Gal Yaluz is advocating terminating Zita’s employment with
Vita. We must investigate this situation before we terminate Zita’s employment particularly given
the character reference that Rifat has given. The behaviour could be considered as gross
professional misconduct, but we must find out the opinion of other Vita representatives taking
part in the scheme as to whether her claims about lack of guidance are true. Especially given the
statement about “Our people” needing the freedom to make mistakes, learn, develop and evolve.

We must also consider how any trade union will react as Zita is likely to be a member, if they feel
in any way that we have contributed to this out of character reaction then they could make life
very difficult for Vita if we were to pursue dismissal under gross professional misconduct.

Even though social media appears on our risk register it appears that we do not operate a Twitter
usage policy and have no training on this as a communication tool, this is a significant weakness in
our training programme and we must immediately instigate a social media usage policy and
guidance to all staff, rather than just taking retrospective action, we should be proactive and
create this policy.

Benefits of social media as a business communication tool
Social media activity can provide us with some very useful information about Vita’s customers,
such as who they are, what they like, and how they feel about our brand. If we can actively
engage with them and listen to their comments and responses, we can gather relevant customer
data and use that to make improved business decisions, producing more relevant features in our
apps and on our devices.

A presence on social media will also make it easier for our customers to find us, connect with us
and share their success stories with us. By connecting with our customers on social media, Vita is
more likely to increase brand loyalty. Social media advertising is also an inexpensive way to

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