It’s a little meta to talk about social media in a social media venue, but what better way to talk about all the employment law challenges employers face when they’re dealing with such a rapidly evolving medium? Last week we hosted a panel of employment lawyers who weighed in on what they saw as the looming challenges and the important benefits of social media in the workplace.
Employment law experts Eric B. Meyer (@Eric_B_Meyer) of Philadelphia law firm Dilworth Paxson LLP, and Donna M. Ballman (@EmployeeAtty) of Donna M. Ballman, P.A., anchored the chat. They offered some great insight on social media from both the employer and employee side of the topic. They were joined by some very astute colleagues who weighed in.
Key takeaways from the chat included:
- Social media can be a Pandora’s box of information employers may want to avoid having. Risks for employers in using social media: inadvertently uncovering information about disability status, pregnancy, or other protected status; running crosswise with the National Labor Relations Board; a perceived invasion of privacy; learning more about employees personal lives than is beneficial; discrimination charges. For employees issues include: productivity issues; and a risk of over sharing things that might be not safe for work.
- Checking employee social media during the hiring business is at best a little risky, and at worst opens employers up to potentially damaging bias claims and other headaches. Meyer recommends waiting until the very end of the hiring process to do any social media checks, and making sure it’s not the decision maker that’s doing the checking. Ballman and other participants came down on the side of just avoiding it altogether.
- Generally all agreed that employers should avoid pushing too far into employees social media by doing things such as requesting employee passwords (a practice banned in many states and localities anyway). As Meyer said: “Demanding FB logins/passwords in hella stupid.”
- The risks shouldn’t scare employers off however. Benefits of social media include information sharing, employee engagement and branding for companies. Ballman pointed out employers can use social media to announce events, benefits or other important information. Participant @KaileeGoold noted: “everyone wants to feel important + connected -#SoMe makes this earier than ever; caveat = must be authentic #hrintelchat”. And @hersavvycareer chimed in with “Social media shows you what you ees “really” care about – take out the guesswork #hrintelchat”
- SnapChat as a recruiting tool, and the newest social media forum, has employers the most concerned; LinkedIn is where employers are the most comfortable; and Facebook falls somewhere in the middle.
It was a lively discussion. If you want to see the whole conversation check out the feed below.