Networked Nonprofits and Social Media

"This blurring of personal and professional lines has, in turn, led to the trend of employees getting “Facebook fired” — i.e., being dismissed because of questionable social media posts that come to the attention of their coworkers or supervisors."

“Fired for Facebook: Using NLRB Guidance to Craft Appropriate Social Media Policies,” by Gordon B. Schmidt and Kimberly W. O’Connor (Indiana University — Purdue University Fort Wayne), Business Horizons, Sept./Oct. 2015, vol. 58, no. 5

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681315000658

Although social media use has become more prevalent, the gray area between employees’ free speech and companies’ legal protections remains largely unexplored. Accordingly, the authors offer four overarching recommendations for firms seeking to balance the rights of their workforce against the safety of their reputation.

Allow employees to express legitimate opinions about their working conditions on social media, but don’t give them license to ridicule the company or its customers. 

Craft social media policies that avoid ambiguity.

Learn from other firms’ language mistakes. 

Keep up to date on case law.

Although guidelines prohibiting sexual harassment, hate speech, or discrimination on social media should be fundamental for all companies, other caveats might be more applicable to particular industries. Healthcare firms should pay special attention to patient confidentiality, the authors note, and tech companies would do well to address copyrights, patents, and intellectual property rights. Marketers should receive even more specific instructions, because their social media activity encompasses an increasingly large and crucial component of their job description — one that often requires them to be edgy and attention seeking.