Lifestyle

Minding the messages

PENALTY!: Knicks Amar’e Stoudemire doesn’t have a typical job, but he faced an increasingly typical work hazard: trouble with the boss over a social-media post. (Anthony J. Causi)

PENALTY!: Knicks Amar’e Stoudemire doesn’t have a typical job, but he faced an increasingly typical work hazard: trouble with the boss over a social-media post. (
)

There once was a time when employers’ biggest concern about social media was keeping employees off the grid during work hours.

How MySpace that seems in retrospect.

With participation in social media seemingly ubiquitous, employers’ focus has shifted to what exactly their workers are writing on Facebook and Twitter — and what kind of potential harm it might do to the company’s rep or to its bottom line.

Which means workers need to mind what they post, lest they find themselves the target of some unwanted attention from the boss.

“There is a fear that employees will use [social media] to say negative things about their employer or about the brand,” says Curtis Midkiff, director of social engagement for the Society for Human Resource Management. “It’s a growing concern.”

Part of the concern is that they’ll share confidential information, or “potentially damaging insights into the employer brand,” says Midkiff.

And nobody wants in-house gripes being aired — among other things, “it could impact the ability to recruit new talent if your employees say negative things about their working experience.”

One study says employer worries aren’t simple paranoia. A 2011 poll commissioned by Symantec of more than 1,200 companies found that the typical firm had had an average of nine “social media incidents” in the past year, with 94 percent of those firms suffering negative consequences such as a drop in stock price, litigation expenses and a “damaged brand reputation.”

And this comes at a time when many employers are encouraging workers to Tweet about their latest workplace triumph or otherwise use social media in ways to generate positive attention. According to a 2011 survey by the office space supplier Regus, 55 percent of US firms are encouraging their employees to join social networks.

The problems arise when they generate the kind of attention no employer wants. Like when a physician’s assistant at a Port Chester, NY, medical center caused a local stir by posting photos of himself performing medical procedures on patients — in one case holding a syringe to a patient’s neck, in a photo captioned “When you can’t start a line in a junkie’s arm . . . go for the neck!” The center publicly apologized — and promised to school its staffers on social-networking protocol.

Sending ill-considered tweets is an increasingly popular way to run afoul of one’s employer. Just ask New York Knicks forward Amar’e Stoudemire, who in June was fined $50,000 by the NBA after he issued a Twitter blast to a fan that contained a gay slur.

And in another case that drew attention last month, a reporter for the news site Politico, Joe Williams, was suspended and then eventually fired for sending tweets that disparaged Mitt Romney, to the dismay of his objectivity-conscious editors.

Workers who talk smack about colleagues online are a problem more and more employers are encountering. George Boué, vice president of human resources at a commercial real estate firm in Florida, became one of them when an employee who didn’t secure the title she thought she deserved announced her displeasure on her Facebook feed, prompting another worker to chime in with a vulgar display of support.

“She said, ‘Those a-holes don’t know what they have and they’re going to get theirs eventually,’” says Boué.

Ultimately he didn’t deem the incident a firing offense. But an employee who was once held in high regard is now viewed through a different lens.

“It causes us to question, is this really such a great employee? What she does performance-wise is very good. That’s what we’re struggling with,” says Boué, who blogs about management issues at BossDepot.com. “What does this really mean for the future of this person?”

Other Facebook posters have met a less ambiguous fate. Robert Becker, a Chicago BMW salesman, was canned after he complained about the downscale food the dealership served during a promotional event, as well as for photos and sarcastic commentary posted about a test-drive accident at a sister dealership.

Here’s the rub — one of the postings is protected speech under the Wagner Act, a federal law enforced by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). When Becker and his colleagues bantered on Facebook about how serving hot dogs instead of something fancier would affect their sales commissions, Becker was engaging in protected speech. But when he posted about crack about about a 13-year-old who test-drove a Land Rover into a pond, Becker was in unprotected territory.

That’s because whether it’s at the water cooler or on Twitter, employees can discuss work-related issues without getting fired for it, according to guidelines set forth by the NLRB — which has fielded hundreds of complaints from workers axed for social-media actions.

“If you’re complaining about terms and conditions of employment, working conditions, and you’re either complaining to fellow employees or you’re seeking to rally fellow employees, then it’s pretty clear that that’s protected,” says Marshall Babson, a labor lawyer and partner at Seyfarth Shaw.

But unless state law says otherwise, discussing work issues is about the only speech that’s protected from reprisal by employers — and even there you can get into trouble if you post things that “are plainly untrue or the employee who makes the post has no basis for knowing whether they’re true or false,” notes Babson.

And employers aren’t likely to make a distinction between social-media scribblings that embarrass the company and those that are personally embarrassing, particularly in a world where workers are more and more viewed as “brand ambassadors” whose poor behavior could reflect on their employer, says Midkiff.

Problems can arise in unexpected places. Case in point: the New York-based public-relations executive who sent out a tweet maligning the city of Memphis — right before a meeting with FedEx, a major client which happens to be headquartered there. The FedEx folks weren’t amused, and he and his bosses had to publicly apologize.

Hoping to avoid such potential embarrassments and business-killers, a growing number of employers are issuing social-media guidelines that “set parameters and expectations,” says Midkiff. (Soon some may be doing more than that — a new report by the tech research firm Gartner, Inc., predicts that by 2015, 60 percent of corporations will have formal programs for monitoring external social media.)

Some social media guidelines expressly forbid employees from sharing company information, and/or ask workers to make explicit that their posts reflect their personal opinions and not the company’s.

Having seen the problems that can arise from social media posts, Boué says his firm is getting ready to join those who’ve issued guidelines.

“The idea is to provide some guidance and a little bit of awareness,” he says, “especially with younger generations that don’t see this potential issue about everybody seeing what they have to say.”

Tweet treatments

Employers’ social-media concerns are just one more reason workers need to be mindful of what they post for the world to see. Here are tips to keep your job safe and your Twitter feed dull:

Don’t expect privacy: No matter how restrictive your Facebook privacy settings or how anonymous your Twitter handle, don’t post under the illusion that colleagues can’t read them. Privacy settings create a false sense of security, says James Alexander of Vizibility, a reputation management firm.

Use a disclaimer: When posting, add a disclaimer to the post itself or to the “about you” description that says these are your opinions, not your employer’s, suggests Curtis Midkiff of the Society for Human Resource Management. That applies “even when you talk about how wonderful it is to work there.”

Assume the worst: “Whatever you’re posting, put on the frame of mind that you’re writing it to your boss,” says Alexander. “If that thought makes you wince, then maybe you shouldn’t be posting it.”

Don’t expect protection: Keep in mind that your right to free speech won’t save you from the chopping block if you write something controversial. When you’re a worker for a private employer, “the First Amendment doesn’t apply to you,” says attorney Marshall Babson. — B.M.