CASE 1-2 WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF 21ST CENTURY HRM
Angie was standing at her (former) desk, picking up her personal items and wondering how she had gotten into this mess. At one shoulder was the head of HR, and at the other was one of the security officers. They were there to escort her out of the building as soon as she retrieved her personal items. Thinking back, the last hour or so had been a whirlwind. She had come to work like she had for the past several months, maybe a little late and a little hung over, but she was there.
Shortly after she had sat down at her desk to start making phone calls, her supervisor had called her into his office. He asked her to accompany him to the HR manager’s office. Once there, she saw a printout of her (public) Facebook page and the blog that she kept on pretty much a daily basis. She was a little embarrassed by the photos on the printout, but at least they weren’t as racy as some she had considered putting up. She was really glad that when she graduated from college, she had purged her account of all of those pictures of the Florida vacations on the beach (and other places).
Angie knew, like all of the other employees, that company management had been recently going through some of the social networking sites to review potential recruits before they decided to hire them, but she didn’t know anything about management reviewing current employees’ personal webpages. She had, however, read (well, scanned) the company’s social media policy in the employee handbook and had signed a form saying she understood the requirements. Well, she thought, my pages are pretty clean since I was warned about this by career services in college.
However, what she saw next really bothered her. There was the highlighted section of her blog from last Thursday. She had forgotten about that! In it, she noted that she had a whopping hangover because of the girls’ night out on Wednesday night, and she had said, “I think I’ll call in sick because I just can’t face working for that idiot with this headache.” Well, they knew that she wasn’t sick. How could she have been that stupid?
As she sat there, she suddenly realized that this was no normal conversation—it looked more like an inquisition. And when the HR manager informed her that the company was going to terminate her employment because she had violated the social media policy, she couldn’t believe it. What had happened to freedom of speech? What had happened to a person’s right to have a life outside of work? Could the company monitor her personal communications that had nothing to do with work and then use them against her? She wasn’t sure, but she thought that was wrong. Nonetheless, here she was, cleaning out her desk.
A 2012 report by SilkRoad Technology declares, “75% of workers access social media on the job from their personal mobile devices at least once a day, and 60% access it multiple times.” But “fewer than 10% of companies offer social media training to their employees. And only 23% have a specific policy regarding use of social media.”80
Also, according to a recent study by Harris Interactive for Careerbuilder.com, about two out of every five employers are using social networks to screen job candidates.81 More than 40% of employers have decided not to offer jobs to potential candidates based on content from their social networking sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter, and others. At the same time, 19% said they had hired individuals because of their social media activities. A Business Insider article identifies several recent firings because of social media. These include an employee ranting about his employer on Facebook, a breach of personal privacy when putting photos on Instagram, and using company equipment to make a video complaining about the company, among other issues.82
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has recently jumped into the debate on social media posts, with some new policies and some mixed rulings in social media cases. The NLRB rulings generally direct that it is illegal to adopt overly broad social media policies “like bans on ‘disrespectful’ comments or posts that criticize the employer—if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits, or working conditions.”83But employers have been judged to be within their rights in other cases when disciplining employees who acted alone to disparage or vilify their employer or its customers. According to a quote in Forbes magazine by Tony Wagner, a spokesman for the National Labor Relations Board, “The NLRA does not protect personal rants that don’t pull in other employees who may be experiencing poor working conditions.”84
Social media sites are no longer just a location where you can connect with your friends. Companies are routinely using these sites to research both recruits for employment and the actions of current employees. The Internet is full of references of people fired for things that they said on their personal web pages. And it doesn’t necessarily matter if you set your pages to private. Your friends may still capture comments that you’ve made on their pages without you even knowing about it. In addition, recruiters in some states can use your “friend” list to find people to call for references, and if your friends are unaware of the purpose for the call, they might say something that you’d rather they didn’t. Employers can look at who has recommended you on sites such as LinkedIn and may approach those references as well.85
Social media is here to stay, and companies are using it—but is Angie right? Can the company use her personal pages on social media sites against her as an employee? Should the employer be able to discipline an employee because of a personal social media page? Even if it can, is it ethical? Can employees have any expectation that their personal rants—whether against their employer, a local store, or a former boyfriend or girlfriend—are private? Isn’t free speech protected by the Constitution?
Organizations (and many employees and former employees) are now struggling with these questions. We will discuss these questions as we explore the world of 21st century HRM over the next 16 chapters, but what do you think?
Questions
1. What if Angie harmed the company or its reputation in some way with what she posted? Would that change your answer?
2. What if she gave out confidential information about new products or services?