Legal Framework And Significance Of HR Practices – Analysis Of A Case Scenario

Issues Raised by the Company Against the Employee

Describe about the Legal Framework and Significance of HR Practices.

In this assignment, a case scenario has been given where a company has raised issues against an employee’s assumed conduct. The company has fired the employee for this reason. The employee named Tolu has approached an HR consultant to discuss about her future action. The employee believes that, she has been treated unfairly. She believes that she has the freedom of speech and the company has no right to check her personal communication, which has nothing to do with her job. Here the HR consultant has to analyze all the critical issues that have been raised by the company against Tolu. These issues are like company reputation, staff communication, privacy at work and managing conduct. The HR consultant also need to find out the legal position of the employee against the company regarding the regarding her termination over Face book post. It is also required to be analyzed whether employees can whatever they want on their social media accounts.  In addition, the HR consultant also needs to investigate the implication of ethical practices regarding the management of social media within workplace. The HR consultant can take relevant examples and case laws to support his or her judgement.      

In this task, the HR consultant has to evaluate those issues related with employee’s misconduct that has been raised by the company. In this case scenario, the employee named Tolu worked as customer service assistance for a Holiday Company. She has the responsibility to provide support for holiday package booking and online flight booking for customers. The company is recently checking the personal blogs and social media accounts of its employees. From one of the Facebook comments, the company comes to know that Tolu is going to take a sick leave, as she cannot work with headache. The management of the company knows that she is not sick. As she is going to give wrong information to the company as the reason of leave, the company treated it as alleged conduct. The company decides to terminate her employment immediately.

 There are some severe issues have been raised by the company against the employee. They are such as hampering company reputation, alleged conduct, communication between employees and privacy at work. As Armstrong and Taylor (2014) stated that, reputation of an organization can be termed as an opinion of people about that organization. Most of the organizations are very concern about their brand image or public reputation. As Jabbour et al. (2013) mention that, company reputation is a distinct form of brand image, which can be developed with the help of positive communication and conversation with customers and other stockholders. Behaviors of stakeholders such as commitment, advocacy are the positive outcome of company reputation. According to Jose and Mampilly (2012), any corporate misstep or wrongdoing can negatively affect the reputation of the company. For example, the company Coca-Cola lost more than $60 million in the year of 1999, as some schoolchildren reported to have symptoms like shivering, nauseas, and shivering after drinking the product (Antonioli et al. 2013).  In this case, scenario the holiday company thinks that Tolu’s comment in the Facebook page can give wrong information about the working environment of the company. It can negatively affect the company reputation.

Legal Position of the Employee Against the Company

There is another issue has been raised against the employee in effective management of conduct. According to Hoch and Dulebohn (2013), a company always wants to maintain discipline at workplace in order to control the behavior of employees. It also helps the corporation to establish company rules. The major reason behind conduct management is correct behavior of employees. There are some major example of misconduct is like dishonesty, use of abusive language, theft, failure to notify absence etc.  In this scenario, the company has considered Tolu as a dishonest employee. As the company knows that, she is not actually sick; the company accuses her for misconduct. 

There is also another issue that has been raised in this case, which is the privacy of employees at work. According to Katou and Budhwar (2012), individuals have less privacy rights at work than they have in their personal life. Workers do not have the privacy to check their emails at the work. In the workplace, employers have the power to check their conversations at workplace.  In some states like California, rules have been developed that a notification has be sent to the employees when employers check their personal messages (bbc.com 2016). The US Supreme Court has developed policy that employers can check the messages of employees. Here the company management has checked the Face Book account of Tolu and finds out the conversation. In this case, the employee has to be more cautious while talking in social media. Tolu has to be more careful to say what she wants on her Facebook page or in her blog. She was aware that the company management had been recently going through the social networking sites of new recruitments. However, the company was also reviewing the blogs of existing employees as well. Tolu was not aware about it.  She unknowingly has posted a comment about taking a sick leave due to headache. As she is not actually sick, she has to be more careful about leaving any false comment in social media sites.

However, Tolu can take some legal actions against the company. There is some employee information, which is legal for surveillance. Employers can check whether employees are violating the company policy or not (bbc.com 2016). Management can check personal messages of employee to investigate any criminal incident.  In this case, the company should not have checked the Facebook account. Tolu in her comment mentioned that she might have taken a sick leave due to headache. However, she came to office regularly. Still the company accused her for false information. Here the employee can take protection of International human rights law 2006. In the article 19 of International convent on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), it has been mentioned that every person has the right to hold any opinion without any interference. They have the right to impart or receive ideas or information with the help of any media.

Implications of Ethical Practices Regarding Social Media Management

In this task, the HR consultant has to critically discuss the application of good practices regarding the management of social media at the workplace. Presently most of the peoples in this world use social media. There are more than 1.1 billion users of Facebook, more than 500 million users of Twitter and 225 users of LinkedIn (bbc.com 2016). It is also analyzed that huge numbers of employees use social media at workplace. In US, there are more than 66% employees use social media more than 2 hours per day (bbc.com 2016). 25% peoples who will reject to work in a company prohibit the use of social media. This huge amount of usage of social media has created fear in the mind of employers. From the contemporary human resource management theory, it has been found that inappropriate HR practice related with social media management can decrease the productivity of employees.

As Alfes et al. (2013) mentioned that social media policies are also an important part of HR practices just like other polices such as discrimination, vacation and leave.  Governments of various countries have developed some rules and regulations related with the social media HR practices. Some of these regulations are self-contradictory in nature, which creates confusion. However, the basic principle of social media HR practice is about respect (Kehoe and Wright 2013). The HR practices must have to respect employee’s privacy and employer’s authority. 

There are mainly two rules related with the social media HR practices related with respect. Firstly, employers of a company have to be careful with the terms they use and the context in which these terms are used. Secondly, employers have to be tolerating about public criticism (Marler and Fisher 2013). For example, a restaurant chain has fired an employee for leaving informal comment about the supervisor in Facebook. In reply, the employed had developed a YouTube video to share his experience at workplace. There are thousands of viewers, who watch this video in YouTube. It has distorted the reputation of the restaurant chain. Employees also have to be careful about using social media. They must not leave any irrelevant or informal message about the company in social media. They need to understand that these comments can harm the reputation of company and distort the brand image. It can lead to suspension or permanent suspension of an employee from a job (Marescaux et al. 2012). In this case scenario, Tolu had to be cautious about leaving a comment on Facebook related with sick leave. 

The Importance of Good HR Practices Regarding Social Media Management

As Morgeson et al. (2013) mentioned that, the HR practices related with social media management can be best described with the help of RESPECT.

Responsibly

Workers have to be responsible for three aspects. They have to be responsible for the content of the post and the audience these posts reach. They also have to think about the potential impact of these posts. For example, an officer of Boston Police department kept on tweeting about a bombing incident in Boston. For this reason, he was fired from the job (News.bbc.co.uk. 2016). He violated all these three rules.

Etiquette

Employees cannot leave any comment in social media sites, which give rise to racial discrimination (Renwick et al. 2013). They must not harass other employees using their social media comments.  It is against the policy of a company to develop harassment and discrimination free working environment (Weber et al. 2012).

Figure 1: Effective HR practices to control usage of social media

(Source: Jabbour et al. 2013)

Selectivity

Employees have to be selective about the time, situation, and content of their comments. For example, good review of employees about a company can improve its operation. On the contrary, negative feedback about supervisors, working environment can harm the reputation of the company.

Privacy

The National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) has considered that contents like mistreatment to employees, performance of supervisors can be discussed publically if they are used for employee’s welfare (Marler and Fisher 2013). However, employers have the authority to maintain privacy over certain aspects such as business practice, employees, and customers. 

Efficiency

Development of effective HR practices can control the usage of social media at workplace. They should use social media at workplace periodically (Jabbour et al. 2013). It will also help to improve efficiency of performance of employees at workplace.

Confidentiality

HR practices needed to be developed to make sure that employees have to protect pricing models, business plans of the organization. As Morgeson et al. (2013) mentioned that employers often reveal some sensitive information about their clients to employees. Employees in social media should not discuss this information.  A confidentiality agreement has to be signed by both employers and employees to maintain confidentiality.    

Transparency

Employers have to be honest and transparent about the information they provide in the posts in social media. When employees post anything about their employers they need to remember that they are also the part of the organization. Any wrong claim about the company can also hamper their career.

Conclusion

In this assignment, the scope, legal framework and significance of HR practices of an organization has been discussed. There is a scenario has been discussed in this assignment where the employee works as telephone support for flight and holiday package booking for a holiday restaurant chain. She is fired due to her irrelevant comment in Facebook related with sick leave. The company has accused the employees with various issues such as misconduct, distorting company reputation. She approaches to a HR manager to discuss about her future steps.

The HR manager analyses that the employee provides wrong information about the working environment of the company. It can negatively affect the company reputation. However, the employee can take action against the company in accordance to the International human rights law 2006. The effective HR practices required control social media usage are also discussed in this assignment. A company has to develop its HR policies depending on respect. There are certain points such as responsibility, etiquette, selectivity, privacy, efficiency, confidentiality, and transparency that both employees and employers have to keep in their mind while providing some information in social media sites.

Reference list

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Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

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