The world of social media could hold unexpected traps for professionals – and extreme care should be taken to avoid having your name and reputation tarnished online.
Emma Sadleir, social media lawyer and author of a soon-to-be-released book offering advice on surviving the digital age, tells about how quickly and easily this can happen – often without any fault on the part of the victim.
Speaking at a KPMG/Women Corporate Directors event, Sadleir stresses that social media needs to become an important item on the boardroom agenda.
A lot of the issues we are seeing on social media, she says, stem from generational issues. Young employees could unwittingly compromise a company in material ways, with senior managers completely unaware of what’s happening on social platforms.
Sadleir points out that the social media services are free, and are not represented in South Africa, so they are under no obligation to comply with local laws.
In addition, a lot of the terms that users are bound by are inherently unfair – and there is no concept of privacy on many of these platforms.
The legal profession is starting to see more litigation around LinkedIn, largely associated with corporate information leaving a company; or from employees leaving companies and failing to update their LinkedIn profiles – and so their personal opinions are associated with a company that they don’t work for.
Of course, social media is a useful tool for recruitment, and Sadleir says organisations should check potential candidates’ online presence since the company’s brand will be associated with the individual.
This holds pitfalls as well, in case companies find out personal information that shouldn’t be part of the hiring decision, and so there is a trend to outsource social media searches.
Twitter holds different dangers, Sadleir says, because of its immediacy. There is the case of an employee who tweeted an offensive comment from his professional account by mistake. Despite deleting it immediately – within 14 seconds – it was online long enough for him to lose his job.
Companies need to be aware that people entering the workforce now are digital natives, and use social media prolifically and instantly. “As they enter the workforce, you will see more problems, particularly because of this trend to
over-documentation.
“It is terrifying that as the workforce gets younger, there could be breaches.” Confidentiality breaches and insider trading could become more prevalent.
There are many instances of social media being used to successfully prosecute either legal or disciplinary proceedings, Sadleir says.
Importantly, uses grant the social media platform the copyright in their images, so by using the service users lose their rights to privacy.
For the photo and video sharing sites this has tremendous implications for privacy, confidentiality and blackmailing opportunities.
Because a text platform lacks tone, users could intend a joke, which may be misinterpreted by the recipient or other observers on the platform.
From a reputational point of view, we need to accept that every person has a digital footprint, and it’s important to regularly check your online reputation – both as an individual and a company.
It is vital for companies to get a grip of what’s going on online in order to manage the brand. This means the board needs to be involved and not simply outsource the job to someone who may not represent the brand effectively.
This means there need to be good contracts in place, as well as a process for approving content before it goes out.
What happens online can have very real consequences in the real world. People can lose jobs, companies can lose money and in at least one instance the entire Dow Jones dropped within a minute.
Bear in mind, says Sadleir, that an employee’s opinion can affect the company’s reputation, ability to trade and their share price.
There are many laws that apply to content online and on social media as there are on any other public platform. And all of these laws come into play as soon as you publish to one other person,
They include defamation privacy , hate speech, crimen injuria, contempt of court, confidentiality, insider trading, state secrets, intellectual property, protection from harassment, data protection, statutory restrictions, advertising law and employment contracts.
Every personal in the chain of publication can be held responsible. And material is considered published where it is viewed. Importantly, in South Africa, content only prescribes three years after it was last viewed.
In terms of employment, the CCMA has been consistent in its rulings that what an employee says on social media could be reason for dismissal if it breaches the employee’s duty of good faith, or brings the company into disrepute, Sadleir says.
In short, Sadleir says every company should have a social media policy and be clear upfront about who owns the IP.
The test, Sadleir says, should be if you are not willing to have your face on a billboard alongside what you are about to publish, you shouldn’t publish it.
