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Workplace Guidelines ISO Legal Direction

February 15, 2011 · 11 comments

It could almost read like a personals ad: mature, rules-oriented, ethical and upright professional seeks partner who is strong, law-abiding and willing to offer support in times of hard labor.

Many companies  are still struggling to find the perfect match between workplace guidelines and legal precedence — and how far social media policies can extend outside of the traditional four walls. What was seen as the opportunity to create legal precedence — or at the very least clarity — regarding this, was the highly watched case of Souza vs AMR.

Back in 2009, Dawnmarie Souza, an emergency medical technician with ambulance service company American Medical Response of Connecticut, was fired  after criticizing her supervisor on Facebook. Her case was scheduled to be heard before a federal labor board judge in Hartford, Connecticut, on Feb. 8. But what many companies were hoping would be a way to establish legal precedence on workplace behavior and social media has now been settled out of court, leaving still many unanswered questions as to what is and what’s not enforceable when it comes to social media participation.

Employees may be rejoicing, but some legal experts are disappointed that the National Labor Relations Board reached a settlement on Feb. 7 with a company that fired an employee for bad mouthing her boss on Facebook, dashing hopes for a legal precedent to guide employers’ social media policies.

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Tagged as: career management, employees, guidelines, labor, social media policies, social media policy, workforce, workplace guidelines

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10 Social Media Commandments for Employers [Workforce Management]

March 9, 2010 · 1 comment

Original Post: 10 Social Media Commandments for Employers, By Gene Connors, Workforce Managment


http://4everydaylife.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/guidelines1.jpgEmployers must implement social networking policies, obtain employee consent for monitoring and conduct their monitoring legally and responsibly. By following these 10 guidelines, employers ensure that their employees can enjoy social media without employer static and interference.

With apologies to Shakespeare, who was quite the networker himself in Elizabethan times, to network or not to network is not the question. Social media is a fact of life for millions of people, so the real question is not whether we connect, but where and in what ways we should connect to benefit from online networking’s pluses and avoid its minuses. Because many, if not most, networkers are employees, the question is also how far employers can and should go to guide employees’ social networking activities to prevent or reduce employment-related problems.

Here are 10 social networking commandments for employers. If followed, they will enable employees to enjoy social media without employer static and interference:

1. Influence appropriate work-connected behavior and use by employees with a social media or networking policy. Privacy rights are gaining ground each day, particularly in employee-friendly states such as California and New Jersey. But rest easier, because employers have rights too. These include an employer’s ability to create and enforce reasonable policies to protect its employees, its property and its reputation from false or reckless actions by its employees. Reasonable and responsible employee use of social media starts with clear, work-connected policies, including a social media/networking policy, to frame acceptable and unacceptable e-behavior.

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Tagged as: guidelines, rules, social media policies

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