The Internet has obscured the boundaries between people’s personal and professional lives, as more workers friend and follow their colleagues. Notably, even when employees are talking to one another, attacks on an employer that are unrelated to employment terms and conditions-an offensive remark about the CEO’s appearance, for example-can be a legal basis for termination. “If it’s not clearly part of an ongoing dialogue between that employee and co-workers, it’s not protected by the National Labor Relations Act.” ![]() “An employer could terminate an employee for saying, ‘This employer’s a cheapskate, or cheats on my wages, or is stealing my tips,’ or whatever the issue is,” says attorney Mark Kluger. If people aren’t engaging in a conversation with co-workers, they can be fired for their online behavior. Can Workers Grouse About Their Jobs on Social Media?īusinesses can bar the use of social media on the job, but they can’t stop employees from discussing work-related issues, whether they’re venting in the break room or posting on Glassdoor.Īs long as workers are engaged in a dialogue with each other, criticism of working conditions, pay rates and management is considered “concerted activity” protected by federal labor law.īut that doesn’t give employees free rein to air their grievances. HR professionals and executives must weigh the potential damage to a company’s image and reputation against their desire to foster a supportive workforce that doesn’t micromanage workers’ actions. Determining how to respond is no easy task. “If you jump in there and get involved in a conversation that would’ve petered out on its own, that isn’t the best response either.”īut doing nothing may not be a viable option when business leaders are subject to intense pressure to terminate an employee who’s behaving badly. “Sometimes, it’s not even a 24-hour news cycle anymore-it’s a 15-minute one,” says Betty Lochner, an HR consultant and owner of Cornerstone Coaching and Training in Olympia, Wash. I don’t see any evidence that it’s getting corrected anytime soon,” says Meyer, a partner at FisherBroyles in Philadelphia.Īdding pressure to HR’s role is the ubiquity of social media and the speed at which comments can erupt into full-blown crises. The frequency with which I see incidents of people getting fired doesn’t seem to have declined. “A firefighter, for example, who puts out a racist meme. He and other experts believe that this type of termination is becoming increasingly common. Hiring managers also may be expected to act as defenders of the company if a candidate’s online posts have the potential to reflect poorly on the organization’s image.Īttorney Eric Meyer, who blogs about workplace issues, tracks news about employees whose offensive social media comments cause them to lose their jobs. When an employee posts something offensive, HR professionals are often on the front line of protecting the employer’s brand. Even though Gunn said he regretted his words, it wasn’t enough to save his job. That’s what happened to “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, who was fired in July after comments he wrote on Twitter several years ago involving pedophilia and rape resurfaced. ![]() In other instances, individuals lose a job for social media posts they made long before their employment began. Storey deleted his tweet, but not before a screenshot of it had gone viral. ![]() Or take Kenneth Storey, a University of Tampa visiting assistant professor who lost his job days after his tweet last summer suggested that the Texas victims of Hurricane Harvey were experiencing “instant karma” for voting Republican. Barr quickly deleted the racist, Islamophobic post and issued an apology, but ABC executives still dropped her from her sitcom. Take comedian Roseanne Barr, for example, who tweeted this spring, “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” referring to Valerie Jarrett, a black woman who served as a top aide to President Barack Obama. The bombs people drop on social media can detonate right away or lurk like hidden land mines. In some cases, someone is terminated from a current job for recent problematic posts.
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