Last year, a couple colleagues and I put together a workshop (full slides below) entitled, “How to Use Social Media and Not Jeopardize Your Job.” I delivered a variation of it at the Philadelphia Federal Executive Board’s EEO and Diversity Day back in November.
During the workshop, participants break into small groups to grapple with several common scenarios that arise in the workplace around social media use by employees. Over the next 4 weeks, I am going to share the scenarios that we use in the classroom and invite you to grapple with them, too. Here’s the first one:
Karla is a Human Resources Specialist at an agency. After a particularly difficult day, Karla is frustrated with a colleague and makes the following comment on Facebook: “Ridiculous how [name of agency] keeps incompetent people around. I’d say it’s time for them to clean house!” There are rumors of a reduction in force coming on the horizon, but nothing official has been announced. She makes the comment after work hours from a home computer.
- Would / should Karla lose her job?
- What would be a fair policy in terms of how agency employees should use social media during their personal time?
- What if colleagues join her in commenting about the work situation and begin to organize to do something about it?
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- An employee should be extremely careful in posting anything about work, especially if it casts the agency, a colleague or a customer in a negative light.
- A fair policy would seek to clarify the difference between professional and personal use and connect online behavior to current guidance on the appropriate conduct of an employee in a public setting.