Social Media-Keeping Current And Former Employees Quiet

There is no secret to the fact that technology is changing everyday and with these changes new issues are impacting the work environment. Disgruntled current and former employees can, and do, lash out against supervisors, managers, co-workers and the business itself. Some even do it from their company owned computer. Employers need to be proactive with having a policy that denies employees the use of the company computer for personal reasons and another policy prohibiting the use of personal handheld devices that have access to the internet. There are so many “rant sites” where employees can go to air their grievances in a public forum (some employees join some of these sites together and after work blast their supervisor, co-workers, and the services offered by the business). 

Employers need to have policies in place expressly prohibiting any such conduct on or off the clock and any violation will be grounds for disciplinary action up to and including termination. You can also give employees guidelines to operate within to avoid potential privacy issues or violations of the Labor Code (as an example, if the policy is too strict it could prohibit employees from discussing salaries which is a clear violation). In other words, you don’t intend to prohibit use, but there are rules that they have to abide by.

Controlling former employees is a lot harder and has to be addressed at the time of termination. Severance packages is an option if you know the employee is the type of individual that may lash out on the internet.