Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, MSN ... you name it. If it is a social media site, you can be fired for comments you post.
There have been a number of cases where an employee’s misuse of social media has lead to their dismissal. However, it appears that these aren’t just outliers, but the result of a serious crackdown by corporate America on tracking their employee’s online activities.
According to a new study by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, of companies with 1,000 or more employees, 17 percent report having issues with employee’s use of social media. And, 8 percent of those companies report having actually dismissed someone for their behavior on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. That’s double from last year, where just 4 percent reported having to fire someone over social media misuse.
Some other interesting findings from the study:
15 percent have disciplined an employee for violating multimedia sharing / posting policies
13 percent of US companies investigated an exposure event involving mobile or Web-based short message services
17 percent disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies
There’s likely two factors at work here: employers more closely monitoring social media sites, and employees continuing to not use common sense when posting about work life, either by sharing sensitive corporate details, or simply by making foolish remarks about their employer. This epic exchange between an employee and her boss on Facebook from TheNextWeb is a perfect example:
Even if you do use common sense in your postings, however, it’s important to remember that when you’re behind the corporate firewall, there’s a good chance that anything you write in email, IM, or social media is being monitored. Thus, it’s best to keep the commentary offline, at least unless you’re absolutely sure both your privacy settings and IT setup make sure that whatever you’re saying will only be read by its intended audience.
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Friday, August 6th 2010 at 3:19PM
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