Social media is here to stay. If you have not already, make sure your practice is on board and using social media to your advantage. If you use social media for practice marketing and client interaction having a plan and policy in place is critical.
Sites such as LinkedIn are great for advertising an open position in your practice. So is Facebook. But do you have a policy in place outlining where you will post job ads? When placing any employment advertisement think, about what groups you are targeting, is it diverse? Are you posting the ad in a certain racial or religious group either on Facebook or LinkedIn? Are you Facebook messaging just your own friends who all look, think and act like you? Develop a plan for your practice that incorporates social media but make sure that it is legally compliant and then follow it 100% of the time. Consistent recruitment practices are your defense to defamation claims.
So now that you have placed those legally defensible employment ads you can start interviewing applicants. It is tempting after that first interview to do a little Internet digging on your own? Be honest, we’ve all done it once or twice. Ask yourself what are you searching for? What can you find on someone’s Facebook page or Google search that would prevent you from hiring them? You might find party pictures from Las Vegas on an applicant’s Facebook page (what happens in Vegas ends up on Facebook!). Does going on vacation with friends to Las Vegas disqualify an applicant from employment in your practice? Think of how much you can potentially learn about an individual’s race, religion, sex, age, or other protected classes just by a few pictures or comments. You now have a classic human resource hot potato. You have information about an applicant’s personal life that you really have no need to know in making employment decisions. Can you prove that your decisions were based on legitimate factors? Have a policy of consistently screening applicants. Who is searching? What are you looking for? Is this best left to a third party to conduct back ground checks? Have a policy of what disqualifies an applicant during the screening and background check phase.
Now let’s consider current employee’s behavior on social media. How much control can you assert over an employee’s comments on social media? For instance, an employee goes to Facebook after a long and terrible day and says that they work for the worst veterinary hospital in the world and they are underpaid, undervalued, and then they have the gall to name your practice in that very Facebook post. THEN your other employee sees that post and “likes” it. AND THEN the next morning another employee tells you about these two employee’s grumpy Facebook postings from last night. What can you do? Well for starters you want to discipline them right? Issue the one and only warning, have them sign it and if they ever say anything bad about the practice again you will fire them. To most managers’ this sounds like the perfect plan, right? Well… the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will probably disagree. The NLRB may view disciplining an employee for disparaging remarks as chilling employee’s Section 7 rights. Very simply summarized Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act gives employees the right to self organize, to form or join a union, and to engage in activities for the purpose of collective bargaining.
This is a pretty hot topic for the NLRB at the moment and they have issued several memos within the last year. Here is a link the NLRB notice on social media http://www.nlrb.gov/news/acting-general-counsel-releases-report-employer-social-media-policies.
The bottom line and best legal defense is to have policies and procedures in place that address these gray ethical areas for potential risks.