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Inappropriate Use of Social Networks has Businesses Concerned

NEWARK, N.J., Nov. 3 /PRNewswire/ – Facebook and Twitter represent a breakthrough in marketing and communications that can help businesses connect with others in a flash. From the standpoint of employer liability, however, what happens when such online sharing crosses the line into disclosure of company secrets, office gossip or a provocative video of a drunken co-worker?

“Inappropriate and unwise use of online social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is a growing source of liability risk for employers, including discrimination, defamation and retaliation claims,” said Joseph P. Paranac, Jr., a shareholder in LeClairRyan’s Labor and Employment Group, based in the firm’s Newark office. “Gone are the days when office workers just huddled at the water cooler to complain about the boss or whisper about each other. Today’s highly wired employees are constantly blogging, YouTubing, Twittering and Facebooking, and this has created a thicket of new legal challenges for employers.”

Paranac outlined some of those legal challenges on October 15 while speaking to an audience of management executives, human resources professionals and corporate attorneys during “Key Issues in Labor & Employment Law,” a LeClairRyan seminar at The Park Avenue Club in Florham Park.

Social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter certainly do have an upside for employers, he noted. For example, job applicants often use social networking sites to communicate directly with human resources, and businesses now make effective use of the sites as marketing vehicles that allow them to target specific audiences.

However, firms that give employees wide latitude in the use of these sites during working hours do so at their own risk. A drop in employee productivity is just one of the potential downsides, Paranac told the audience. “Some employees will spend hours on Facebook updating their personal profiles, doing quizzes and puzzles, chatting and sending personal e-mails,” he said. “Some might even expose the company to cyber-security risks by downloading and using suspect applications.”

Common sense would seem to dictate that no employee would post libelous or slanderous statements about a boss or colleague to a Facebook blog, send out a “tweet” containing proprietary information or upload a video to YouTube in which a manager used sexist or racist language. However, employers who think their employees will always act according to the dictates of common sense, would do well to look at the growing body of evidence to the contrary, Paranac said.