ISSUE 11Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified?YES: Brian Elzweig and Donna K....

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ISSUE 11Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified?YES: Brian Elzweig and Donna K. Peeples, from "Using Social Networking Web Sites in Hiring and Retention Decisions," SAM Advanced Management journal (Autumn 2009), pp XXXXXXXXXXNO: Eric Krell, from "Privacy Matters: Safeguarding Employees' Privacy Requires an Effective Policy, Sound Practices and Ongoing Communication" HR Magazine (February 2010), pp. 43-46ISSUE SUMMARYYES: Brian Elzweig and Donna K. Peeples write that although an employer does need to be respectful of their employees' privacy, they also have the responsibility to avoid negligent hiring and neg-ligent retention. They find that the monitoring of an employee's, or a potential employee's, social media is a viable way to avoid these potentially serious problems. This is not to say that an employer's monitoring of social media should be without limits. Special care should be taken in respect to state privacy laws regarding expected privacy and laws regarding the protection of employees outside of company time. NO: Eric Krell recognizes the importance of employee privacy and believes that it must be safeguarded. To appropriately do so, he be-lieves that a concrete, written plan needs to be drafted, and often reevaluated, in coordination with each company's human resource department and a VP of employee security. This will ensure not only a uniform policy throughout the company, but will disclose to the employees if and in what ways their social media will be monitored.2010 was a big year for the popular social networking Web site Facebook. Not only was its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, and the site's tumultuous begin-nings, the subject of an award-winning movie, The Social Network, but the site itself reached the 500-million-user milestone and shows no signs of slowing its growth. Sites like Facebook, such as Twitter, MySpace, and personal blogs, allow their users to stay in touch with friends and family as well as make new192

Robert · Accepted Answer

Bullet Points for YES: 
Employee monitoring of employee social media is justified because of the following reasons 
1) Employers have the right to ensure that the sensitive information is not shared by the 
employees anywhere and that includes the social networking sites. The sensitive 
information can damage the reputation of the company and also will affect the other 
employees working in the organization. Hence, it is the duty of the employer to make 
sure that no sensitive information is shared by employees and so they have to monitor the 
social media of the employees. 
2)  Employers have to check the background of the employee as most people might fake 
their credentials and hence background check should be done using various sources 
including the social networking websites. In the modern days, when lot of crimes and 
terrorism increased, it is essential to know the complete back ground of the employees 
and for that, the employees have to do the back ground check in all possible way. The 
social media gives a good indication of the person’s past and his friends and other 
information and hence the employers need to check the credibility of the employees using 
the social media.  
3)  Employers have the right to check what the employees are doing during the work hours 
as checking the social networking sites during the work hours will affect the productivity. 
So, they check during work hours to see if the employees are misusing office time. This 
is extremely important as the employer needs to make sure that the employees are not 
misusing the office resources and time. Also, there might be a possibility of virus or 
phishing if the employees use social media in the work hours and from the work 
machines. Hence, the employers need to make sure that the employees don’t use the 
social media in work hours and hence can monitor the same.

ISSUE 11 Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified? YES: Brian Elzweig and Donna K. Peeples, from "Using Social Networking Web Sites in Hiring and Retention Decisions," SAM Advanced...

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