Recent Articles from Troy Rackham
Is tonight’s holiday party tomorrow’s post?
Whether based in reality or merely a theatrical troupe, the workplace holiday party always has been a potential hotbed of employment-related hazards. By carefully considering the issues outlined below when planning and hosting a party, employers can prevent an event intended as a reward for employees from becoming a source of unintended problems. + What […]
Caution: social media and hiring ahead
Assuming that employers properly obtain personal information about an applicant from social media sites, employers still need to be careful to avoid certain risks associated with using such information to make employment decisions. Although in the abstract, it may seem like a great idea to use information obtained through social media to guide hiring decisions, […]
Tweet from Uncle Sam:
Social media can get employers in trouble. Without a narrowly-tailored policy guiding how the company will manage its employees’ use of sites like Linked-in, Facebook and Twitter while the employee is on the job, the employer may very well run afoul of the National Labor Relations Act, which is enforced by the National Labor Relations […]
How to create a social media policy
According to a recent survey, social networking sites are a part of everyday life for employees, with 66 percent acknowledging that they visit sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr at least once a week. Although an employee’s use of these sites may appear on its face to be a personal […]
Too much social media at work?
Because the law still is evolving, many employers are fearful of disciplining and terminating their employees for conduct on social networking sites. Although this apprehension is understandable, it need not paralyze employers from protecting their legitimate business interests with an appropriate social networking policy. Recently, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed an unfair labor [[...]
Social media goes to court
When litigating against a former employee, the information superhighway can lead to an evidentiary goldmine for an employer. A former employee’s social media activity may provide evidence of the employee’s breaches, such as a violation of a non-competition provision or breach of confidentiality. Indeed, by mining a litigant’s online presence, lawyers can obtain information about [...]
Friending your co-workers
Any good comedian knows he must tailor the joke for the crowd. The same approach is true in the work environment. A supervisor might comment on a football team cheerleading squad in different ways to his bar buddies than he would to a subordinate at work. Unfortunately, to a large extent, Facebook and other social […]
Social media at work
If you run a business and provide Internet enabled computers to your employees, it is crucial that they understand how or if they can engage in social media while on the job. Given how fast our world is moving, some would say that to prohibit employees from tapping social media at work could hinder the […]
Hiring and firing: How social media fits in
With an estimated 34,000 Google searches every second, the Internet is most assuredly a source of information for employers when making hiring and firing decisions. Given the inevitable use of the Internet to make these decisions, there are a number of questions that employers should consider: • Should an employer use the Internet to investigate […]