Jeff Pulver is hosting a 140 conference meetup in New York City on January 19, 2010 that I will be attending. Here are the details:
- Location
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3LD Art & Technology Center
80 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10006
- Image by notoriousxl via Flickr
I have a friend who is an accountant at a small firm. Lets call him Cliff. Cliff greets everyone with a compliment and is an ace accountant. Cliff surfs the internet at work. Cliff was recently on Twitter, looking for people to follow. He becomes Twitter “friends” with Samantha, an accountant at Hobes and Hobes, a rival firm. From the looks of Samantha’s avatar, she is attractive.
Samantha asks Cliff to meet him at a bar after work. After a few dirty martinis, Cliff tells Samantha that his accounting firm is about to land Giggle, a big, funny internet company. Samantha buys the next round and that was the last thing he remembers. He wakes up the next morning and finds out that Hobes and Hobes has landed the Giggle account.
Does your company block access to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin because you are afraid of employees like Cliff? Is the work environment at your workplace hostile to employees who blog? If so, your company is part of the majority of organizations that have a restrictive social networking policy.
While a strict social networking policy is a simple way of limiting legal liability, do you really think that your company can compete in a 24 hour a day workplace with outdated policies? Probably not. If your company is struggling with how to integrate social media into the workplace, one way to focus is by creating a social media policy with an eye toward collaboration.
The Harvard Business Review observes that businesses are discovering that an über-connected work environment is not just about implementing a new set of tools — it is also about embracing a cultural shift to create an open environment where employees are encouraged to share, innovate and collaborate virtually. Some benefits of a hyper-social company include:
- Access to social media improves productivity;
- Millennials will seek jobs that encourage the use of social media;
- Companies that provide access to social media create a more engaged workforce.
After creating your hyper-social networking policy, it is then vital to address its legal implications, which I addressed previously in Legal Reasons Why Your Company Should Have a Social Networking Policy.
CONCLUSION
Employees are online whether you like it or not. By simply banning the use of social networking sites on company computers, your employees will simply use smartphones to stay connected. By thinking expansively about social media, more specifically about using it for increased productivity and collaboration, there is great opportunity for growth. Have your ideas written in the form of a social media policy, which will put your employees on notice of any potential legal problems. By the way, Cliff is not real. But he could be and you can be responsible for Cliff’s actions without a written social networking policy.
- Image via Wikipedia
Social Media is quickly transforming how people are communicating with each other. It should come as no surprise that employees are now looking to connect with their bosses on Facebook.
The New York Law Journal (under a pay wall) reports today that the innocuous friend request is really a Trojan horse which contains the hidden danger of litigation. Should bosses accept Facebook ”Friend” requests from an employee? I think they should, with certain caveats.
The article cites Michael Schmidt, Esq. of Cozan O’Conner, who argues
“a manager is bound to learn things about an employee that they don’t already know… when the manager learns of some personal attribute through the site, the worker now has the opportunity to argue that any later adverse employment decision was based on this personal information.”
Here are some other potential issues:
- The employer views the profile of an employee and notices that the employee has different religious or political view. This may influence the employer or manager when it comes to time to make a promotion.
- If an employee makes defamatory remarks against an employee or the company, the employer would then have the duty to investigate the incident.
Shanti Atkins, an attorney and President of ELT. Inc thinks that employers should simply ban employees from accepting “friend requests.”
I think that Ms. Atkins approach is naive and could be business suicide. Chris Brogan, speaking in New York last week at the Trust Summit, argued that companies need to listen, collaborate and learn to survive. Companies cannot collaborate with their employees without engaging with them in social media. Moreover, if an employee or employee is doing something improper, such as writing something racist, wouldn’t it be wise to investigate it immediately rather than ignore it?
I agree that there is a risk for potential litigation as people are moving to communicating in written form that is public. There is a paper trail that can be used against anyone for a number of reasons, including litigation.
What companies need to do is have a social media policy drafted that spells out the specifics of what everyone can do when they engage on social networking sites. This new area of transparency creates legal issues. How your company deals with transparency may be the deciding factor of whether it can compete in this new world.
What do you think?
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Social Media is an ongoing experiment. Both people and companies are using this new tool to connect with people that they have never met in person. The main goal of all of this activity is to generate new business. The million dollar question is how to convert your Twitter followers and Facebook friends into paying customers.
The answer, according to members of the panel convened on October 23, 2009, at the Trust Summit, is to build trust. In front of a packed room of tweeps at the Harvard Club in NYC, social media rockstars Chris Brogan, Julien Smith, David Maister and Charles H. Green, discussed the issue of trust and how it relates to social networking.
According to Chris Brogan, the relationship economy will move the future. The goal of using social media is to create sustainable relationships over time.
In his book Trust Agents, Chris explains that on the web, groups of highly motivated people within every circle have already joined together, helping each other reach a higher ground. I asked Chris, through Twitter, how professional service businesses (ie law) can harness this group to become clients. I am skeptical that lawyers and other service businesses can use social media to achieve this goal. Chris responded that you need to be a priest and build a church. What he means is that you should use social media to be part of multiple groups that will help your access each group. Your goal is to be in the center and be the priest.
The trust paradigm is not new. Charles H. Green lectured that you shouldn’t view business through the lens of competition. The purpose of companies is to serve society. He argued that competitors should work together to serve the public. Cooperation between competitors serves everyone interests.
David Sax, writing in Save the Deli observed this spirit of cooperation in the thriving Los Angeles Jewish Deli scene. Throughout the country, Jewish Delicatessen is an institution that is in decline. The pastrami is expensive and people are worried about the impact of schmaltz on their cholesterol. But in LA, the Jewish Deli is thriving because deli owners cooperate. If Nate N’ Al’s is out of stuffed derma, they call over to Greenblatt’s for help. You should do the same when using social media.
As Julien Smith eloquently put it: “Social media is still an experiment. Be curious of other people when using social media. Only by risking can we create greater things for everyone.”
There is no question that the Internet has changed the way companies hire people. Currently 45 percent of employers use social networking sites and conduct online searches to screen applicants. If you are a job applicant, that means that your potential employer is reading you Twitter feed and analyzing your blog posts.
While it is not illegal for an employer to to search a candidate’s social networking profiles, there are risks. In an article written by Jeffrey S. Kein and Nicholas J. Pappas for the New York Law Journal, they highlight a number of legal issues arising out of employees’ use of social networks. They list Anti-Discrimination Laws, Legal Activities Laws, National Labor Relations Act, Terms of Service Violations, Privacy Implications and Business Considerations. I will briefly discuss the the legal implications of Anti-Discrimination Laws.
ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAWS
By simply viewing a candidates social networking profile, certain information can be gleaned that can be a basis for a claim under discrimination laws. For example, if an employer views the LinkedIn profile of a candidate and the employer decides not to hire the candidate or take action within a short time because the candidate lists that she is handicapped, the employer could be held liable. The mere fact that the employer viewed her social networking site can be used as circumstantial evidence of discrimination.
Under New York Law, an employer must use the same standards when deciding who to fire. The authors cite an Simonetti v. Delta Airlines, where Delta decided to fire a female employee because she posted revealing photographs online. She argued that she was being discriminated against because other male flight attendants also posted similar content and were not fired.
