Did you know for example that when it comes to making a good first-impressing at an interview, 90% of professionals believe that being well-groomed is important? Well, that’s a bit obvious your might think, but one thing I didn’t know is that male HR professionals are 75% more likely than females to consider facial stubble a red flag when meeting a job candidate. The bottom line is that 84% of HR professionals agree that well-groomed employees climb the corporate ladder faster than those who are not well groomed.

Interesting facts and figures aren’t they? Anyway, you can read about this and more down at the Gillette Resource Center where you can find the complete survey as well as a number of instructional videos on how to maximise your grooming (including the “How to shave your head” instructional video which you can see below and more)

• Introduce the purpose of Social Media
• Be responsible for what you write
• Be authentic
• Consider your audience
• Exercise good judgement
• Understand the concept of community
• Respect copyright and fair use
• Remember to protect confidentiality and proprietary information
• Bring value
• Productivity matters

Many of these seem to be drawn from a number of existing publicly available social media policies, particularly the one that IBM have published, but it’s more than just that. The last point on productivity for example, does ring true with a number of conversations we’re having at the moment.

The big issue isn’t just the perception that people will play games online, read news, chat with friends to the detriment of their job. That choice is already there (newspapers, chatting on the phone etc). However, introducing a new channel, especially to staff who aren’t normally public facing, can mean a shift in direction in what they are doing, sometimes at the cost of the value that are currently producing to the organisation. This could also cause additional stress on staff, particularly with mobile computing and Internet-everywhere thanks to high speed satellite internet. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s a valuable shift both to the organisation and to the individual; but if it’s done without concern about what the employee is currently doing, gaps could appear in processes and the productivity continuum that could negatively impact the organisation; and this could be a worry.

Anyway, enough about me; if you want to read more about the points above check out the article on Mashable.