Friday, August 20, 2010

WIRTW #140 (the social media training edition)


I spend part of this week conducting social media training for a client. I spoke to groups of managers and supervisors. What surprised me most about their collective response to the policy wasn’t the ban on personal social media at work, or their potential personal liability for harassment under Ohio law, but the fact that their employer expected them to be responsible for what their friends and followers posted on their social media sites that could potentially reflect poorly on the company. As someone who is well engaged with social media, I also found it interesting that while the group was nearly unanimous in their use of Facebook and LinkedIn, no one (but me) tweeted. What I took away from these sessions was that if you are going to be rolling out a social media policy—and you should be—you should incorporate training sessions about the policy. What seems straightforward to you might be troubling to your employees. It also makes sense to cover the social media basics, because you will have employees that can’t tell a tweet from Tweety Bird.

Here’s what I read this week:

Wage & Hour

Discrimination

Human Resources & Employee Relations

Trade Secrets

Litigation


Presented by Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, with offices in Cleveland and Columbus. For more information, contact Jon Hyman, a partner in our Labor & Employment group, at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com.