Social Media and the Workplace

Social media is becoming a rising issue of employers everywhere, and now they are determined to control what is being written about them on the web. Companies are restricting their employees from stating anything negative about their workplace on social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube.

Companies are monitoring social media sites by "Googling" their name and scanning the results. Any negative post from an employee is bad publicity for the company. The public takes the opinions of workers seriously, and when those opinions are unbecoming of the face of the company it means bad publicity. Bad publicity equals a loss of profits in the minds of the corporate world, and now they are taking action.

I know what you're thinking. What about freedom of speech and the rights of everyone to have a personal voice about their workplace? These rights are signed away by the employees themselves. Contracts that state the companies policy on social media and what is or is not to be written about the workplace are becoming more standard in the hiring process. The more companies see social media as an opportunity for free publicity, the more they are going to monitor what is being said about them online.

These contracts can be bad news for employees in "at will" states. These states reserve the right to fire anyone, at anytime, for any reason, without notice. Refusal to sign a social media policy form could be grounds for termination.

Being fired because of Facebook (for example) is not unheard of. Groups are forming by the hundreds of people that were fired because of a Facebook status. In March of 2009, NBC San Diego published an article about a teen that was canned after posting a status about being bored at work. How many times have you done that?

With a growing number of cases regarding social media and the workplace, the dilemma seems to be shut up or pack up your things. Do you want to keep you job, or vent about it publicly? That is now a question social media users must ask themselves before typing a single negative word about their workplace on their not-so-personal media websites.