Online vs. on the job: Companies, workers slow to address social media’s public-private crossover

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By Caitlin Coakley

CHARLOTTE — As Facebook and other social media sites increasingly blur the lines between public and private, some observers say far too few companies and employees are being proactive in negotiating this new landscape. Instead, many are waiting until a problem arises — for example, a manager’s authority is comprised after subordinates view personal photos and anecdotes online.

Jason Keath, social media strategist and founder of Social Fresh conferences, says that while companies have always frowned on workers bringing bad publicity, what’s different now is the scale of the public.

“I think most companies have never had to deal with that as much. They may have things like, if you break the law, or if you really embarrass the company in a large public way, you’re probably going to get fired,” he said, “but they never really had to educate their workforce how to deal with a large audience.”

For many employees, what they do on their own time — on-line or otherwise — is none of their employer’s business. But when it comes to the Internet, that sense of disconnection is unrealistic, said social media strategist Corey Creed.

“They need to come to grips with that,” Creed said. “If I come to work naked, I get fired. It doesn’t matter that what I decide to wear is a personal choice; it affects your business. And the same is going to happen with personal Internet use.”

Routinely, however, employees find themselves in news headlines or in an attorney’s office after actions that they considered private clash with employers’ expectations.

Last fall, IBM employee Nathalie Blanchard lost her sick leave pay when her insurance company deemed her severe depression cured after seeing her vacation photos on Facebook, according to Canada’s CBC News.

Closer to home, Wake County eighth-grade teacher Melissa Hussain was suspended this month after parents complained about her angry reaction, via Facebook, to students who left a Bible on her desk, according to The Associated Press.

Employment attorney Kirk Angel of The Angel Law Firm said several employees have consulted him claiming they were unjustly fired over social media postings.

“A lot of employees feel that it’s not fair that their employers are digging into their personal life,” Angel said. “Oftentimes, they’re right. But I can only help them with what’s legal, not what’s fair.”

Since North Carolina is an employment at will state, companies can terminate workers as long as they don’t violate discrimination laws. Angel said that while he acknowledges employers’ rights, he worries about the implications of a boss making decisions based on behavior outside the workplace.

“It’s a slippery slope if employers begin to believe that anything in the employee’s personal life is something that they can or should control,” Angel said.

Mason Alexander, on the other hand, an employment attorney with Fisher & Phillips, said the expectation of privacy is an illusion.

“There’s really no privacy issue, because if you put it on the Internet, everybody in Beijing can see it,” he said. “We’ve entered this era, it’s like reality TV. We all want to live our lives in public.”

That’s why he recommends that companies spell out expectations instead of waiting until problems occur.

“It’s better to have the policy in place first, but they have to spend a little time thinking, ‘What is it we want to protect, what do we want to do, how restrictive do we have to be to achieve our goal?’” Alexander said. “I would say that most of them don’t want to be more restrictive than they have to be.”

In November of 2008, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh sent employees a memo warning that “offending” postings to social media sites could be grounds for termination.

Four CMS teachers were disciplined and one was fired in 2008 for posting items on Facebook that officials determined would “affect ability to perform job duties,” Media Relations Supervisor Cynthia Robbins Shah-Khan said.

Kenny Colbert, president of The Employers Association, said many employers limit what employees can publicly discuss about their jobs, often restricting them from posting confidential information or discussing new products.

“You don’t want your employees putting something out there that your competitor can use,” Colbert said.

Companies also are well within their rights to ensure employees do not reflect badly on the business, he said. Just as a company would fire a manager who was arrested for drunk driving and landed himself on the front page of the newspaper, companies don’t want employees embarrassing themselves — or the business — on the Internet.

“It’s generally thought that you are an agent of the company 24 hours a day, and you don’t do anything that can damage a company’s reputation or be embarrassing to the company,” Colbert said.

But when it comes to complaining about a workplace, Mason said even the strictest policies he’s seen allow employees to post whatever they want, as long as they take measures to keep business and professional lives separate.

“Their position is, ‘As long as you don’t identify yourself with us, you don’t use our company name or logo, then nothing that you say is identified with us and we don’t care what you say,’ ” he said. “If you want to say you work for a lousy place, that’s fine, just don’t tell everyone where it is.”

For higher-level employees, however, expectations are likely to be stricter, according to Colbert.

“You don’t want a schoolteacher, you don’t want your company president, you don’t want your human resources manager in provocative positions, but what difference does it make if you’re a third-shift truck driver?” he said.

Alexander recalls a recent case of an HR manager who was disciplined after posting photos of herself in a bikini along with details of weekend trysts. When other employees found the photos, they became the office gossip and the manager’s authority was compromised.

“Everybody was laughing in their sleeve,” Alexander said. “If she had been an hourly employee, nobody would have cared. It was the position she held in the company and, of course, managers are always held to a little higher standard.”

Hourly employees generally fly under the radar unless management learns about misconduct through workplace gossip, he said.

“Let’s suppose it’s the employee who’s supposed to be out sick and is instead at the county fair. Once the employer knows you’ve lied, it’s got to be addressed,” Alexander said.

In most cases, common sense goes a long way to prevent such problems, Creed said.

“When you’re in an office environment, and you get paid good money, you’re expected to know you don’t put certain things in writing, whether it’s email, social media, a Web site, even just a piece of paper, there are things you don’t write down,” Creed said. “You can say them, but you don’t write them down.”