People are now spending more time on social media sites than on e-mail, says attorney Jody Katz Pritikin, and a lot of that time is being spent at work. In today’s Advisor, Pritikin shows how to manage the new steamroller of social media.
Pritikin, who is with Katz Consulting & Associates in Santa Monica California, offered her suggestions at the SHRM Employment Law and Legislative Conference, held recently in Washington, DC.
What Are the Benefits to the Company?
First of all, recognize that use of social media isn’t all bad, says Pritikin. Some of the benefits to the organization are:
- Connect and communicate with colleagues, mentors, applicants, and customers
- Promote values, goals, and market interests
- Engage employees
- Increase computer skills and communication skills
What Are the Costs to the Company?
The biggest cost to the company is wasted time, often up to 2 hours per day, Pritikin says. She also finds:
- Increased risk of lawsuits
- Disclosure of secrets
- Damage to reputation
- Venue for disgruntled employees
- Venue for union organizing
As a demonstration of the pull of social media, Pritikin asked her audience how many of the audience had checked their email or social networking sites since her presentation began (about 20 minutes). More than half of the hands sheepishly went up.
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Can You Just Ban Access?
Many attorneys do recommend banning access to social media sites, Pritikin says, but that’s very hard to enforce. She recommends that you put out guidelines, consistently enforce them.
Employment Law Cases
Pritikin offers several court cases that help HR managers to understand social media situations.
- Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group. The court found that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy for employee’s Myspace chatroom, Spec-tater, but did find that the employer violated the Stored Communications Act by making another employee give them her password to enter the chat room.
- McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway, Inc. The court ordered disclosure of Facebook and Myspace passwords in discovery.
- Quon v. Arch Wireless. It was not an unreasonable search by the government of a public employee when the employer read the employee’s text messages (but this was a narrow holding).
- NLRB v. AMR. A cautionary tale: social media policies should not restrict employees from discussing the terms and conditions of employment.
- Holmes v. Petrovich Development. The court found no attorney-client privilege for an employee’s email she sent to her attorney from the company computer when policy said that the employer monitors emails.
- But, compare to Stenfert v. Loving where there was attorney privilege for password-protected Yahoo email sent from company-provided laptop.
The main message that case law sends to HR managers: Set the ground rules out clearly, says Pritikin.
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Special Rules and Training for Users
You should develop special guidelines and training for employees who specifically use social media as part of their jobs, Pritikin says. For example:
- Recruiters. Train carefully about discrimination in the hiring process (ADA, EEOC, state rules), and invasion of privacy (FCRA, Stored Communications, Wiretapping, etc.)
- Bloggers. Cover FTC required transparency, accidental disclosures, flaming comments/replies, unfair business practices, confidential/trade secret concerns
- PR. Who is ‘the company”? Branding, image, reputation concerns and restrictions on commentaries and press releases in litigation and when going public.
Additional Tips
- It isn’t enough to have a policy if your employees do not know about it and are not trained on it.
- You’re in trouble if you use social media extensively in the recruiting process, and then when new hires arrive, tell them of restrictive social media use policies. That’s going to backfire.
- Social media use is bigger than email use.
- You cannot afford to ignore this topic in training; social media is the “smoking gun” lawsuit of the future.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, Pritikin’s key elements of a social media policy, plus an introduction to a unique 10-minutes-at-a-time training program.