Facebook and Twitter Create Trouble at Small Workplaces


From WSJ:

These days, bad employee behavior is no longer confined to cubicle walls. Some workers are now sharing disparaging opinions and even proprietary information about their employers on social media – Web forums that in many cases can accessed by anyone, including a company's clients, investors and competitors.

"We have a brand here we have to maintain and I don't think our clients need to see what our employees are doing on Facebook," she says. "There needs to be a separation between what's business and personal."

12-Word Social Media Policy by Mayo Clinic: "Don’t Lie, Don’t Pry, Don’t Cheat, Can’t Delete, Don’t Steal, Don’t Reveal" (http://goo.gl/1Jwdo).

References:

Facebook, Twitter Updates Spell Trouble in Small Workplace. WSJ.

Comments from Google Buzz:

Heidi Allen - This is a great article - the last para is telling:

"People somehow feel like only their friends are going to find this stuff so they tend to be themselves," says Mr. Laermer. "There's no acting here. It's like a lie-detector test."

The boundary between private life (you can't tell me what to do) and company policy are now so interwoven that the 'jurisdiction' of the HR department is no longer clear.

I still find it unbelievable that people don't think through themselves the impact of what they are doing and assume (hope/pray) their comments won't be found because of all the white noise out there - but if you're looking it takes 30 seconds to find a comment (unless you're posting in buzz in which case it's impossible)

Ves Dimov, M.D. - Buzz search is not bad at all. It's better than Twitter which has a long-term memory loss (the index goes back only 7 days).

Image source: Wikipedia.

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