Written by Liza Barry-Kessler, Privacy Counsel, LLC
Are your employees blogging? Tweeting? Using FaceBook, LinkedIn, or BlogHer? Do you have any idea?
If you don’t know, and your company or organization is large enough that you can’t call out “Hey? Are you using any of these things?” and get a verbal answer from everyone, then the answer is probably yes.
And they might not be using it in a way that reflects well on their workplace. For example, the now-Internet-famous Lindsay and her former boss both used Facebook in a way that few employers would find acceptable.
In that example, the boss clearly knew who was posting disparaging remarks about him and about the workplace.
What if she’d been complaining anonymously? On Twitter, there is no identity verification, or even any particular motive for using a personally identifiable username. There, so many people complain that they hate their jobs that someone created a feed to capture all of the “I hate my job” tweets in real time.
I tried to find anonymous complaints, but nearly all of them appeared to be either fully identifiable — first and last name — or partially identifiable — first name + profile photo or location. Some even named the employer!
Still, it isn’t hard to imagine a de-identified or anonymous complaint stream in a social network. Companies and organizations should consider instructing employees not to post disparaging comments about their workplaces anywhere that is generally viewable by members of the public.
These kinds of posts and comments seem like the same kind of “venting when you get home from work” comments that many people engage in, but it is in fact, completely different.
Your competitors can’t show potential clients or recruits a transcript of your employees’ dinner table discussions. Inappropriate verbal comments made to an employee’s friends or family are unlikely to become evidence in a discrimination or harassment complaint. These are searchable, they last indefinitely online, and they very well may result in people losing their jobs.
And although your employees may feel anonymous while complaining about their jobs in social media settings, they need to know that they aren’t really anonymous.
If they said something actionable, you could subpoena Twitter’s records about the account, which at a minimum, include an email address. Very likely it also includes the IP address where the account was first created, or where it was most recently used.
While that isn’t necessarily a good proxy for identity, if a person is using their home computer, it should give you ISP data that could be tracked back to a specific customer account. And if that account belongs to Joe Smith at 123 Main Street, and you have an employee with that name and address, you have a pretty good idea who has been “anonymously” disparaging your company online.
Tempting as it might be, don’t fire them online. Some things really should be done the old fashioned way.
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