Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#61 Do the right thing: communications edition

• Season 1 • Episode 61

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Today we've covered a new topic that has been briefly touched on in previous episodes, but we are hyper-aware that if we called it exactly what it is... nobody would listen to it, because the topic is tiresome.

However tiresome, it's still important - if not more important than a lot of others, and that is:  the legal and ethical parts that comms pros need to adhere to, or be aware of. Things like the key laws you need to abide by in the comms space, alongside ethical considerations you'll need to keep in mind when creating content, distributing comms and generally participating in the wide world of comms

So, this week's episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast may cover some boring topics... but they're ones you need to know! So buckle up and let's get into it!

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Mel:

Hi, and welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter, a podcast about all things communication without the waffle. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and in this show, I will give you short, punchy, practical communication tips and insights. You can start using in your communication practices right away. I'm a former corporate communication executive who happily took a redundancy, started my own business and never looked back. These days I use my 20 plus years of experience to help guide organisations of all shapes and sizes in how to communicate more effectively. I'm wife to Michael, cat mum to Cookie, aunty to 12 nieces and nephews, a yoga teacher, and a group fitness fanatic. I promise these episodes will always be short, sharp, and helpful, so let's get amongst it. Hi, friend, and welcome to another fresh episode of Less Chatter, More Matter. And once again, I am jolly pleased to have you tuning in. And if it's your first time here, a big hello to you. I do hope you'll stick around. And I also hope that those of you who are listening and find value in the show rate and review it. It really does make a big difference to how many people are able to benefit from this learning. So today we're going to cover a new topic that we've just touched on briefly in previous episodes, and that is some of the legal and ethical stuff you need to know as a communicator. I called this episode, don't be a dickhead, do the right thing in comms, because if I just called it law and ethics and communications, nobody would listen to it. And it would be potentially quite boring, but it is actually a very interesting topic insofar as there's so much you need to know. And so much that can go wrong if you don't know some of these things. And unfortunately, I've seen it play out every now and then. So we are going to cover a lot of the, uh, well, some of the key pieces of legislation and some of the key ethical quandaries, I guess, that you need to know as a communicator. And when I say a communicator, I mean, anyone who engages in any communication on behalf of a business or a brand. So whether you're a business owner doing digital marketing, a PR executive, a marketing agency, or anything in between, if you are communicating to an audience, this episode is for you. Now, essentially, a lot of the legal and ethical stuff is just common sense about doing the right thing. But as I said, unfortunately, I've seen plenty of examples, and unfortunately, quite a few lately, of people not doing the right thing when communicating. And whether that's willful ignorance or otherwise, I do not know. But if you want to gain people's trust and build your credibility, then you need to know these things and put them into practice. So today I'm going to cover just a few pieces of legislation and ethical quandaries that you need to know, because there is so much out there. It would actually take forever. We'd have to do a whole series. So I'm just choosing what I think are the most relevant pieces. And we might do another episode in the future where we go into a little bit more detail on some other pieces. If you guys would like that, let me know. So let's start with legislation, and I will caveat this with, of course, this will be from the Australian perspective, but there is similar legislation and regulations elsewhere around the world that applies to communications. And the first big piece of legislation I want to talk about is the Spam Act. Now, the Spam Act of 2013 really came into being after technology got ahead of legislation, as it often does, and we're seeing it right now with AI. People were starting to get bombarded with email spam, as well as marketing cold calls, text messages, and so on. So the Spam Act , came into being in Australia, and it prohibits the sending of commercial electronic messages via email, SMS, multimedia message service, or instant messaging without the consent of the receiver. And this is one of the most important parts of this legislation. You must have the consent of the person to send them messages. There's two types of consent that the Spam Act, talks about, and the first is express consent. So this is where somebody has deliberately and intentionally opted in to receive electronic messages. So sometimes they, it means, you know, you've joined a mailing list or you've agreed to get messages, uh, when you've filled in a form and you've ticked a box saying you consent to receiving marketing and so on. So that's express consent. The second type is inferred consent. So this is about the relationship you as a consumer have with the sender of the message. So whether that's you as an employee and the sender is your boss or you as a customer and the sender is the business. So for example, let's say you've signed up to a subscription with Canva, it's inferred that you would be okay with receiving emails from them about their products. Or you've entered your details into a form to get a free download from a business and it can be reasonably inferred that your email will be added to their database. So that's all good, but what doesn't constitute consent that you should be aware of as a communicator? Well, firstly, if you've added somebody to a mailing list just because they've emailed you about something or sent you a message via Instagram chat or whatever, um, and maybe it's just, they've had a query about a product or a service, you can't then just add them to your database because that wasn't the intent of them contacting you. And there's no inferred, uh, consent there either. Or let's say you've built a database for a particular business, but then you start to use that database to start spruiking a completely different business that you started. There's no inferred consent there. So imagine you run a gym, you've got a database of email addresses that you've collected with inferred or direct consent. And you've been using that to send messages about gym related things, so, the classes you offer, your PTs, products, partnerships, all those things. But then you decide to start a second business that is not related to that gym and you use your database to advertise this new business. That's not okay because the consent wasn't inferred for that business. The second key element of the Spam Act is identity. So all of your messages have to contain clear and accurate identification of the sender and information of how you came to contact them. So for example, that from field in your email has to be really clear who that's from, or the subject line of the email, um, what's actually in the text of the message needs to be, can be clear around who you are and why you're contacting them, or your website address is on there, all those things as well. But something that very clearly identifies you. And then the third key element is that all commercial electronic messages must contain an unsubscribe facility. So even text messages must have an option to unsubscribe. And there has to be clear instructions on how you opt out. So by law, you as the business have five working days to act on unsubscribe requests. So most systems now have an automated way to do that. MailChimp, for example, if someone hits unsubscribe. They're just out automatically. But if you've got quite a manual system still of say text messaging people, then you be aware you need to unsubscribe them within five days. So make sure that if you've got a database, you are ticking off those three things. You can confirm legitimate consent to be on that database. You've identified yourself as the sender in your messages and you have an unsubscribe option on everything. The second key piece of legislation, which does intersect a little with the Spam Act, is the Privacy Act. So there's the Federal Privacy Act in Australia, but there's also state and territory based versions too. So we're just going to focus on the federal one. At a very high level, that act governs the way in which businesses and federal government agencies handle personal information. And it stipulates how to do that through 13 principles, which they call the Australian Privacy Principles, the APPs, and those are set out in the Act. Now, personal information in the Act is defined as information or an opinion, even, about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable. Whether the information or opinion is true or not, and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not. So personal information is even verbal in this case. Now, what does this have to do with comms? Well, regardless of the size of your organization, you are probably required to comply with the Privacy Act. Especially if you disclose or collect personal information about another individual for some sort of benefit, service or advantage. So again, this comes back to things like your communication database. This is all information that's covered by the Privacy Act. It's also about the information you collect from your customers and your staff and any other stakeholders. Now, I won't go through all 13 of the privacy principles. That would take forever. So I'm just going to pick out some of the most relevant ones for you. The first one is open and transparent management of personal information. So you need to have privacy practices, procedures and systems in place that ensure compliance with the principles. And those procedures and systems and policies should ensure you can appropriately deal with inquiries and complaints. You've also got to make sure you have and make readily available a policy about how you manage personal information. So if you have a business website, for example, you absolutely should have a privacy policy on there, particularly if you have any kind of contact form, for example. The second principle that I'll touch on is the use or disclosure of personal information. So what this basically means is you can't share or use personal information that you've collected other than for the purpose for which it was collected. So unless the individual consents or they would reasonably expect their personal information to be used for a secondary purpose. So for example, uh, your doctor needs to give your information to a specialist, right? So let's say you're holding an event and that's being sponsored by some sort of third party. I'm speaking about this from recent experience. So you've got a third party sponsoring it, but you are managing the ticketing system which collects people's information. Then the sponsors ask you if you can share the details of the people who have bought the tickets so they can contact those people. You absolutely cannot do that unless there's been some sort of tick box on the ticket form that said they agreed to share their information with these third parties. So just be aware of that. There are other ways to get around that, like a lead magnet or having that tick box on there. The third principle I'll touch on is direct marketing. So this is where the act intersects with the spam act. So you can't use personal information for direct marketing purposes, unless the individual consents, reasonably expects it, and there's that prescribed opt out process in place. And the fourth one I'll touch on is security of personal information. And this requires you to take reasonable steps to protect information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. So what does that mean? Basically, you need to have really good cyber security systems in place, but also really good processes so that when people like leave your business and no longer require access to your databases or information. They don't have it. So for example, you might run a small business and everyone has access to the MailChimp database. They can all log in, but then a person leaves. They should not still be able to access that MailChimp account. So you need to make sure their access is removed or you change the login, for example. And the second part of this principle is that you must also destroy or de identify personal information that you no longer require. So let's say you have a membership based. part of your business. If a person has now left that membership, you don't need their personal information anymore. So you should probably at the very least de identify it or destroy it. And the final act I'll touch on is the Disability Discrimination Act. As communicators of any ilk, this one is so important to know, particularly when it comes to digital communication. So the law basically requires all businesses and service providers to be accessible and inclusive, and that means ensuring communication is freely accessible and inclusive. So to not give someone the same opportunity to engage with your communication would basically be a violation of the law, is my understanding. So under this law, website accessibility is a legal requirement along with accessibility of web based services. And that means it's no longer good enough to just create a new website and content for it and assume most people will be able to get engaged with it and that's fine. Not okay. So apart from it being a legal requirement, having an accessible website, honestly, it's just the right thing to do. So how do you do it? Well, to ensure your website meets requirements, you should look to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So those are worldwide standards on ensuring accessibility in website content and design. Also, get some experts to help you out. You don't have to know everything. And start small. You don't have to do everything all at once either. Okay, so those are a few of the things that are set in stone, so to speak, through legislation. But then there's other areas of business and communication where it gets a bit murky. You know, it's not illegal, but it's definitely not okay. And I'm going to touch on a few of those things now. And the reason being that while I think most people do the right thing, most of the time, there's always a few who don't, and again, whether they realise that or not is a whole other thing. But there are also things you should look out for with your colleagues, and be prepared to question and have tough conversations when they arise. So the first thing is misrepresenting your areas of knowledge or expertise. And as communicators, we often get into the depths of a particular topic like healthcare or transport or construction. And we have to, because we have to work out how to communicate about those topics in ways that actually reach people. But that doesn't mean we're all of a sudden subject matter experts. So to then offer any opinions on those areas or represent yourself as having some expertise in those areas is not okay. I see this a lot in life coaches, for example. So people who have been through a lot, they've gone to therapy themselves, and they now regurgitate that as if they are trained counselors or psychologists. It's one thing if you've used that experience you've had and coupled it with getting a qualification in life coaching. It's quite another if you then... don't do that. You don't get qualifications, but you try and make money or gain status out of regurgitating that information. Again, it's a murky area because if you're not misrepresenting your qualifications or lack thereof, it's not illegal, but it's definitely dodgy. So stick with what you know, credit the sources and get actual subject matter experts to share their knowledge. The second piece I'll touch on is not using inclusive terms or language, and this is covered somewhat in anti discrimination law, but I'm talking about when we're using terminology that is biased or old fashioned, but not necessarily illegal. So for example, using language like ladies and gentlemen in your communication, when it's very likely you'll have people who identify as neither of those. Or you assign gender in your comms to particular roles. So for example, you might be talking about a hypothetical situation and referring to a fictional CEO always as a he and their executive assistant always as a she. Inclusive language also extends to culture and nationalities and people with disabilities. So, for culture and nationalities, for example, you can't just go referring to people as Africans because they come from the continent of Africa. You should be much more specific about their cultural or national identity. The big tip here, if you are not sure - ask. Most people would prefer to be asked first rather than you just make a guess and you end up hurting them. You end up embarrassing yourself and damaging your credibility. The final ethical quandary I will touch on is overselling benefits. So whether that's overselling the benefits of a product or service or overselling the benefits of a change, it's not fair because you're often over promising and under delivering. So this usually happens when we really want to get our audience to do something differently, but we're expecting a lot of resistance or a lot of competition. And we go out of our way to hype up the benefits without acknowledging any of people's concerns or any of the challenges or any of the pitfalls of what we're putting out there. Now, it's not right for quite a few reasons, but mostly people see through it and they will suspect you have something to hide. They're not stupid and you will damage your trust with your audience. And secondly, as I said, it's just not fair to your audience. They deserve to have a balanced view of what they're expected to buy into. So while you should absolutely sell the benefits, don't oversell or over promise because it's likely you will undersell, under deliver and Under produce which will make things even worse in the long run and damage your reputation. So it's time for your episode recap. So tune back in for a quick reminder of some of the key ways you can avoid being a dickhead in communications. Number one, make sure you are aware of your country's Spam Act or similar legislation and regulations. So apart from the fact that you'll just annoy the crap out of your audience and damage your brand, you'll also potentially be breaking the law. Number two, be across your privacy legislation and what that means for how you collect, store and use people's personal information, like their contact details or even payment details. Know when you can and can't share that information and what you need to do if you no longer need it. Number three, the Disability Discrimination Act or similar laws where you are. It is in Australia against the law to have those website communications that don't allow people to be able to easily navigate or use those websites or web based services. So if you are responsible for a website or intranet site or web based service, get stuck into those website accessibility guidelines and get some really good advice. Number four, misrepresentation of knowledge. Only speak to what you know. If there's a topic you're really interested in, or you do happen to know a lot about through osmosis, then you're not considered an expert or qualified. Get people who are qualified to do the talking. Number five, use inclusive language. So this helps your audience feel safe and welcome and shows that you care, which means they'll then care more about what you're saying. And number six, don't oversell the benefits, whether that's the benefits of a change, a product or a service, you will end up disappointing people, which again, will do bad things for your brand and your reputation as a communicator. Now, I know that was a lot, but it would be remiss of me. It wouldn't be right. Wouldn't be ethical to have a podcast about comms without... doing the right thing and talking about this stuff, especially when I still see it happening. And as I said, the majority of people do the right thing most of the time. And when they do do the wrong thing, it's often not malicious or purposeful. It's just lack of knowledge. So that's why I've done this episode. I want all of you to avoid the mistakes by getting educated and helping to educate others. And it also means you'll have the information you need to call out poor practices when you see them. Now, if you want more info on any of those acts that we've covered today, shoot me an email or check out some of the links in the show notes. I will be back next week with another episode of Less Chatter, More Matter. And in the meantime, have an amazing week, keep doing amazing things and bye for now.