Employees: what counts, what doesn't?
by Miki SaxonKelly, my editor here at b5media and author of Tax Girl, pointed me in the direction of an interesting post at Law.com.Written by Harry A. Valetk, a new media and privacy attorney in New York City, it focuses on where to draw the lines regarding employer attitudes towards employees off hours use of social media.
“A 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that 60 percent of Web users aren’t concerned with how much information is available about them online. And only 4 percent had a bad experience because of embarrassing or inaccurate information posted about them online.
But what happens when these intimate details spill over into the workplace? Should our legal, off-duty, off-network online activities jeopardize our jobs? In our reputation-based economy, what are the appropriate boundaries between work and our private lives?”
He goes on to discuss current instances of the overlap, legal attitudes and what may happen down the road.
“…some states have strong protections for employees engaging in legal recreational activities off the clock,” while “California’s Labor Code protects legal off-site conduct during nonworking hours.”
There are already laws that protect from all kinds of employment discrimination, yet the discrimination persists.
I’ve written in the past (here, here and here) about the fact that what is posted in cyberspace stays in cyberspace forever—once it’s posted it never goes away.
As difficult as it is to prove that a person wasn’t hired because of skin color or age, how much more difficult will it be to prove that he wasn’t hired because the manager saw something online of which he disapproved?
Do you Google your candidates? How much does what you find influence you?
Your comments—priceless
Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL
February 9th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I am reminded of the story of the little boy whose mother said, “Don’t put beans in your nose.” He said, “Wow! I never thought of that before!”
Now I’m thinking about Goggling applicants for employment. I also interview students for a leadership scholarship. I wonder what I would find if I Google’d them?