Social Networking and the Impact on the Workplace

My topic is Social Networking and the impact that it has on the workplace.  I personally have experienced a situation in which a fellow employee was removed from a project due to performance issues and used Facebook to communicate her displeasure with the Manager of the department.  Although we are required to read the employee handbook, I did not specifically recall my organizations policy regarding the use of social networking sites.  When I checked, I was surprised to discover that there was no specific policy regarding the use of social networking sites nor was there any language discussing the disciplinary consequence of negative behavior related to the use of these sites.

My article entitled “When Social Networking and the Workplace Collide” discusses the risks that employees take by using social networking sites for personal use and the risks that employers take using these sites for candidate screening, recruitment, performance evaluations, etc. It also discusses the need for a social media policy.

What is the impact on the organization?

Although many of these sites are blocked by employers, employees have discovered other ways to access these sites on company time via the use of websites that bypass the company filtering or by using smart phones to connect to their accounts resulting in lost productivity and abuse of company resources.

Employers that access these sites for screening and recruitment or to provide performance related information potentially take risks including but not limited to employment-discrimination claims, claims of unfair-labor-practice; performance-related feedback (e.g. recommendations on LinkedIn) that may be inconsistent with the formal performance-evaluation process, violation of social-networking Web site's terms of service., employee's common-law privacy rights by accessing these sites to conduct checks on prospective or current employees.

The article indicates that polls suggest that employers are not adequately addressing the business implications of using social networking Web sites. 

What are the solutions?

The solution for organizations is to define their social-media policy.  The policy should clearly state the company’s expectations of employee’s use of these sites. Employers should be clear in using language that reminds employees that their conduct on social-networking Web sites may reflect upon the company and affect the relationships with other employees at the company. The policy should follow and enforce a traditional disciplinary plan including verbal warnings, written warnings, probation and possible termination.   It should also give guidance to managers and HR personnel on how to properly use information obtained from social-networking sites and should control how and which HR staff use these sites for screening and recruitment.

In case you are wondering the outcome of the situation mentioned above at my company, the Manager printed the Facebook message and turned it into the HR department.  The employee was placed on probation for one year, in part, due to the Facebook message but in addition to other issues. Further consequences were the inability to receive a promotion or any bonus opportunities during this time.

Although it seems obvious to most of us how inappropriate the behavior was, the employee felt that the punishment was unwarranted and, to this day, still challenges the punishment compared to the action.  The question is, without a clear policy, would the employee be able to contest it?

Article Link:  http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/story.jsp?storyId=453891896