The social media policy of the company is the best way to ensure that the employees know how to act on the various channels of social media. It can also safeguard the company from legal or security issues. A social media policy is an important component of the HR policies of the company. It provides the guidelines regarding how the company and its employees should execute their tactics online (Ball, 2010).
They help to safeguard the reputation of the company and motivate the employees to share the messages of the company in a responsible manner. So, the purpose of the report is to highlight and resolve the issues confronted by BeautyCo, a company operating in the cosmetic industry pertaining to the right of the employees to privacy, maintaining the reputation of the company and prevention of bullying and harassment at the workplace. As an HR professional, I would recommend the resolutions for the issues so that the social media policy can be effectively implemented in the company.
The privacy rights of the employees comprise of the personal information and activities of the employees at work. Employees have a number of responsibilities on the workplace. One of them is to obey the lawful and reasonable directions. The reports of the Workplace Relations Tribunal of Australia i.e. Fair Work Commission show that the use of social media in bullying behaviors has created challenges for the commission (Phair, 2017).
The most common issue confronted by the employees is the disclosure of their private facts by the employer. The employer publicly discloses the embarrassing facts about the employees to the audience without her/his permission. Sometimes the employers or the colleagues post photographs or specific statements on the social media that may give a valid misappropriation claim without obtaining the consent of the employee.
The solution to the problem lies in enforcing the need of privacy associated with the access details of the employees. It includes the username and password details of the employees. The employees should be told that they should not disclose the access details to any other person. The parameter regarding their usage of what exactly they can post or what they could not be specifically stated to them (Magro, 2012).
The employers may have valid business interests in videotaping the employees but they should only videotape them in open or public areas in which there is less or no expectation of the privacy. The employer should also give a notice to their employees that they are being videotaped (Voshel & Wesala, 2015).
When there is frustration or irritation amongst the employees about the company, they may take it to the social media account for expressing the views on the situation. They may also post photos or comments on their accounts through they can be identified as the employees of the company. It may affect the public reputation of the company (Tsitsi Chikandiwa, Contogiannis & Jembere, 2013).
The solution to the problem lies in setting clear rules, guidelines, and actions to ensure that the staff should be on the same page while dealing with the issues of social media. By creating the policy on social media for the organization, the risk of treating the reputation of the company by the employees would be minimized (Mergel, 2013).
Therefore, the clear guidelines should be set in this regard. It should indicate the methods in which the employees interact with the connections they have made through work and the kind of communication they do about the company. It would surely prevent the risk of spoiling the reputation of the company.
It should be followed by ensuring that everyone in the company is aware of the regulations and any changes made in this regard. The circulations of the rules would motivate the staff for escalating the online activities of their colleagues if they are deemed unacceptable. The company should possess the essential resources for monitoring the activities of the staff in this regard (Dijkmans, Kerkhof & Beukeboom, 2015).
It must make sure that the standards are not compromised and Google alerts must be set to supervise the communications being done about the company. If anything jeopardizes the reputation of the company then it should be responded in a timely and suitable manner.
According to the Fair Work Commission, there are two ways to find out the bullying and harassment being done at the workplace. The posts of social media would be deemed as bullying if they are perceived in the context of work and secondly, the unfriending of a colleague on the website of social media can be considered for the justification of a claim of bullying.
As per section 789 FD of the Part 6-4B of the Fair Work Act 2009(Cth), the grounds for bullying at work comprise of when the individual or a group repetitively behaves unfairly towards the workers. It also includes the behavior posing a risk to the safety and health of the employees.
Therefore, cyberbullying can create serious problems for the company such as poor morale and relations of the employees, increase in their absence or resignations. It may also lead to poor performance and lost productivity and loss of respect for managers and supervisors (Verhoeven et al., 2012).
In order to resolve this issue, the employer should formulate the frameworks on the use of social media for bullying and disciplinary policies. The unacceptable behavior should be clearly stated in the policies. It should also comprise the use of offensive and inferring language towards the colleagues on the social media.
A policy should be formulated which should be in consultation with the representatives of the trade union and employees. Moreover, the employees should take the complaints in a serious manner and investigate them properly. It may be probable that the people may not be aware of their unwelcoming behavior so during the informal discussion, they should be made aware of their behavior in order to stop it. The employers should check the social networking sites and emails if there is a reporting for instances of cyberbullying (Piotrowski, 2012).
In order to resolve the issue of safeguarding the privacy of the employees at the workplace, the employers should prudently research study about the privacy laws of the employees. There should be appropriate policies regarding the electronic monitoring of the phones, computers and emails of the employees (Holland, Cooper & Hecker, 2016).
The monitoring policies should be documented, well defined and the employees of BeautyCo should give the written acknowledgment. If the polices regarding monitoring of computer or emails exist in the company, they should state that there are no expectations from the side of the employees for privacy until they stay on the property of the company or use its resources.
For resolving the issue of maintaining the reputation of the company on the social media, the employees should carefully proofread the stuff they are uploading on the websites. They should respond to all the comments and complaints in order to build the royalty of the brand. If any problem is perceived online, the aggrieved person should be sent a message to continue the discussion offline so that the problem can be rectified (Mergel & Bretschneider, 2013).
It should also be ensured that the apps of the company are working properly. The links should be checked frequently.Another important point that should be discussed here is that there are possibilities that the social account of the company might be duplicated or hacked. The duplicate pages not only harm the reputation of the company but also confuse the search engines which are forced to choose from the versions they would feel is best for the query.
In order to resolve the issue of prevention of bullying at the workplace, a gender-neutral post or email should be used in order to communicate or post a comment on the website. The password of the email should be 12 characters long and it should be a combination of capital and lower case letters, symbols and numbers. The passwords should be changed frequently along with reviewing the e-mail signature (Winer et al., 2018).
Conclusion
Hence, to conclude, it can be said that in the world driven by technology, the human resources have moved beyond the water cooler gossip. With the help of emails and social media, they can immediately share the information with their colleagues. It can open the world of possibilities for bullying at the workplace, spoiling the reputation of the company and posing a threat to the privacy of the employees at the workplace.So , the HR policies should comprise of social media policies so that the electronic communications in all forms should be addressed.
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Holland ,P., Cooper , B. & Hecker, R.(2016). Use of social media at work : a new form of employee voice? The International Journal of Human Resource Management ,27(21),2621-2634.
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Mergel, I. (2013). Social media adoption and resulting tactics in the US federal government. Government Information Quarterly, 30(2), 123-130.
Phair , N.(2017). The workplace and the law in age of social media. The Australian Business Review . Retrieved October 5th , 2018 from https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/opinion/the-workplace-and-the-law-in-age-of-social-media/news-story/333c8e59c5549d633b2a399f0342c1f7
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Winer, McKenna, Burritt, & Tillis LLP(2018). Social Media and Workplace Harassment. Retrieved October 5th , 2018 from https://www.wmlawyers.com/2017/06/social-media-workplace-harassment/
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