Employees Beware: What You Say on Social Networking Sites May Have Implications at Work
On Tuesday, ABC News reporter Terry Moran posted a message to his Twitter account that President Obama had called Kanye West a “jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. The problem was that the comment was made during an off-the-record discussion between Obama and a correspondent for CNBC. Although Moran removed the message within an hour, with over one million followers, the news quickly spread on Twitter.
The bigger story has not been Obama’s comment about Kanye West, but rather, journalistic standards and the use of social networking sites. During a meeting on Tuesday, ABC News President David Westin reminded staff to follow editorial standards before sharing information on social networking sites. An ABC spokesman said, “One of the lessons learned here is that when somebody who is well-known to the news audience tweets something, even on a private Twitter account, it has the same impact almost as ABCNews.com publishing it.”
Whether “well-known” or not, when an employee writes something on a social networking site, that message can have repercussions at work.
A study released in September 2008 showed that more than one in five employers use social networking sites in screening job applicants. One-third of those employers had rejected a candidate based on what they found on a social networking site.
Additionally, many companies are adopting written policies regarding social networking sites for their employees and may take disciplinary action against those whose postings cast the company in a negative light. Thus, employees must be aware that they may be held accountable at work for what they say and do on social networking sites – even if it is done on their own time and on their own computers.
