91视频

Social media research: playing with fire?

One controversial use of social media in the workplace is when employers do so to gather information about potential employees.

Over the past several years, Google has become a tool for gaining personal knowledge of others. A quick search of a name can turn up social media profiles, criminal histories, affiliations and other personal information.

But employment attorney Rich Meneghello believes employers should be cautious about how they use the information.

鈥淏y actively searching someone you are giving yourself information that otherwise wouldn’t have been provided to you,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ven if the information you find isn’t the reason you didn’t hire them, the person could make a case that it was.鈥�

Meneghello suggests checking only a person’s information on Linked In, a social media website dedicated to building business relationships. He recommends avoiding websites like Facebook and MySpace unless the subject grants permission for it to be viewed.

At a climactic point in the 2010 film “The Social Network,” the Sean Parker character remarks, “We lived on farms. We lived in cities. And now we live on the Internet.”

As social media has increasingly gained popularity among real estate brokers in particular, local firms are moving quickly to craft policies for appropriate professional use. But while local employment lawyers agree that companies should have written rules on how social media is used, they also say excessively strict rules can lead to legal battles alleging wrongful termination and First Amendment violations.

On Monday, in fact, the National Labor Relations Board approved a settlement in favor of Dawnmarie Souza, formerly an employee of American Medical Response of Connecticut, an ambulance company. Souza was fired after posting an expletive-laden comment critical of her employer and her supervisor, on her personal computer after work hours.

The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed; however, the ruling was a vote in favor of protecting speech, even when it’s critical of an employer, on social media websites.

“Social media is new, and everyone is still getting used to it, but it’s real and it’s not going away,” said Rich Meneghello, an employment lawyer and managing partner of the Portland office of Fisher & Phillips. “The lines will be drawn and the laws will be fleshed out, but everything is so fluid right now that these types of legal battles are rife with danger for both sides.”

Meneghello suggests crafting a policy around respectfulness and positive portrayal of the company, with mention of social media whenever pertinent. This gives a written policy to point to in case something happens, he said, but doesn’t restrict an employee’s right to free speech.

If a policy limits an employee’s ability to vent, it may violate a portion of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects concerted activity. According to the act, “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

Basically, two or more employees are allowed to act together to improve their terms or conditions of employment, even they do so via complaints.

“If you push your policy too far you’re going to run into this,” Meneghello said. “It’s a hidden land mine.”

Last year, Bluestone & Hockley Real Estate Services updated its computer policy to include references to social media, but left out any reference to what takes place on personal computers after work hours. The policy strictly states that work computers should be used only for work-related activities and not for visiting websites like Facebook, or .

The firm also has a policy that states harassment will not be tolerated, even if it is via an anonymous post on a forum or social media site.

New employees must acknowledge in writing that they have read the entire company policy.

“We worked hard to update this with the most current Internet-related issues just last year,” said Cliff Hockley, a principal broker with the firm. “What we realized was that you can control what happens at work, but what a person does in their off time is much harder to make policies around.”

Jim Mark, CEO of Melvin Mark Cos., said a clause in the firm’s policy addresses disrespect and rudeness, but not social media specifically.

“It’s something we’re looking into, but we view issues more from a personal behavior and personal conduct matter, and try to leave the social media aspect out of it,” he said.

Meneghello also said that even if an employer believes it has ample reason to fire someone for an offensive comment posted on Facebook, such action may not be worth potential trouble.

“The lines haven’t been drawn, so going into a case the outcome is in no way predetermined,” he said. “I always ask an employer: Why put yourself out there in the forefront of an issue that is so popular right now?”

He cited the first legal case arising from a Facebook comment: An employee at Brixx Pizza in North Carolina last year won a suit against the pizza business after she was fired for posting a comment about a small tip she had received.

“If you hear someone say Brixx Pizza, you think about the legal case, not their pizza,” he said. “That’s not good publicity.”