Social Media can leave you unemployed

Posted by biancaaquino under Social Media
From http://www.examiner.com 5565 days ago
Made Hot by: tiroberts on August 27, 2009 4:47 pm

If you are lucky enough to have a job right now, make sure you use social media responsibly. You might find yourself among the unemployed -- all because you used Twitter, Facebook or some other form of social media to inform your "friends" how much your job sucks.

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Comments

Written by ShawnHessinger
5565 days ago

I am kind of waiting for the first lawsuit on this issue. Depending on the subject matter...and the employment agreement with the employer whether formal or implied...to what degree is use of social media free speech and to what degree does an employer have the right to censor it? What is the difference between someone trashing someone's job or company on a Website and being honest about a problem with a product. Example: Checkout people at my local supermarket regularly commiserate with customers that they do find one product at the store better than another or that they think, yes, something is a bit overpriced. Would they be fired if overheard? Remember the classic movie "Miracle on 34th Street" in which a department store Santa directed customers to other stores where items Macy's did not carry could be purchased--and inadvertently gave Macy's a great PR boost with its customers. Of course, I realize that free speech isn't guaranteed to employees where their company is concerned and that there is a huge difference between spoken and written speech--and I suspect the blurry line created by social media is the real culprit here. But let's ask ourselves going back a few years whether we would really have wanted an employee from one of the major cigarette companies in a similar situation to keep his/her mouth shut in the social media world about the health risks of smoking. Companies also must ask themselves what kind of PR they get for firing someone who expressed an opinion.

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