facebook | HR Made Simple

Do you friend on Facebook? Are you linked in via LinkedIn? Do you tweet on Twitter? If you said yes to any of these, you join millions of others in the ever expanding, ever changing world of social media. If you said no, or even if you don’t know exactly what these things are or how they work, chances are you will encounter them soon in your workplace, if not personally.

The power of social media cannot be underestimated. Facebook helped fuel the Arab Spring and BlackBerry Messenger usage is propelling current rioting in cities across the U.K.; so much so, in fact, that the Prime Minister is calling for its suspension to quell the violence.

Organizations are embracing social media for a host of business purposes: sales, marketing, PR and recruiting to name a few. Even those that don’t due to small size or mere reluctance are bound to have to pay attention to social media simply because their employees already are. To help you manage the issues social media usage creates for your organization, HRSentry provides its subscribers with a sample social media policy. There is also a webinar taking place August 18^that 2:00 pm EDT to help you learn more about what various social media are and the myriad effects on the workplace. HRSentry webinars are always free for subscribers.

So don’t keep your head in the sand. With its ever growing power, you need to understand how social media can affect you, your employees and your organization.

As popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin have become increasingly popular with a wide audience, the legal problems that come with them have been magnified. With all the personal information readily available, employers have begun using it to both check applicants out prior to hiring, as well as keeping tabs on current employees. These are two situations that have become increasingly worrisome for lawyers.

While there is no law against checking an applicants Facebook or Twitter account to see what kind of person they are, it opens the employer up to a number of discrimination claims. For example, if an employer finds information on a site like Facebook that reveals the applicant’s disability or medical condition, they are at risk for a discrimination claim. Similar to avoiding certain questions on applications, there are some things you don’t want to know.

The other major situation that arises with social networking sites is when employers/boss’s friend their subordinates. This opens up an employer to a host of discrimination issues including harassment, discrimination or wrongful termination, as well as complaints of favoritism if the boss friends only a select person or persons. One way to avoid this is to wait to be friended by the employee, let them initiate contact outside of work. As usual, the best way to avoid discrimination claims is to document everything and use only that information when deciding on terminations.

Some good advice provided by Legal Blog Watch:

“For those employers who can’t resist peeking at social networking sites, Jennifer M. Bombard, an attorney with Morgan, Brown & Joy, recommends that they document a “legitimate business rationale for rejecting applicants” and make sure that hiring decisions are not motivated by information found on an applicant’s social networking site. Yet even with these prophylactic measures, a discrimination case will be “more problematic to defend” where an employer admits to having looked at a social networking site, says Gerald L. Maatman Jr., an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw.”

The general feeling within the legal community is that there is really no reason to checking applicants and employees online profiles. You can learn any information that is related to the job by conducting thorough interviews and background checks. Other things to keep in mind are that information found online can be taken out of context, could be false, and may not have any bearing whatsoever on the type of employee the person is.