Social media poses risk for employers and employees

Social media abounds with injudicious posts, but a Facebook faux pas can be career defining.

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In the history of social media mistakes, public relations executive Justine Sacco’s Twitter post is the most unforgettable.

Without thinking before she boarded an 11-hour holiday flight from London to Cape Town, the New Yorker posted: “Going to ­Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

The twittersphere reacted rapidly, as Sacco flew on, oblivious to the brewing storm.

The tweet attracted more than 15,000 followers, many calling for her employer, IAC, owner of media sites ­including The Daily Beast, to sack her.

By the time she touched down in South Africa, #HasJustineLandedYet was trend­ing and a hostile tweeter was at the airport ready to photograph her reaction to her public shaming.

Last month, Sacco spoke of the aftermath caused by that ­seriously ill-judged joke — the holiday abandoned because hotel staff threatened to strike if she stayed, death threats and retribution from family members who said she had tarnished their name. And, yes, she lost her job.

The joke, Sacco stressed, was meant to be against ignorant white people: “Only an insane person would think that white people don’t get AIDS. To me it was so ­insane of a comment for anyone to make,” she says in a new book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson.

And it is happening here. Sacco’s is a cautionary tale for the millions of working Australians using sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Fallout from social media comments have filtered through local courts over recent years. A notable case concerned Townsville Good Guys employee Damien O’Keefe, who posted on Facebook that he “wonders how the f --k work can be so f-- king useless and mess up my pay again. C--ts are going down ­tomorrow”.

But it was O’Keefe who went down. His legal saga concluded when his unfair dismissal claim was overturned in 2011 by the Fair Work Australia Commission.

Social media lawyer Paul Gordon, from Adelaide firm NDA Law, says the amount of social media blunders ending up in legal mediation or litigation is rising.

But employees are not always to blame.

Recently, logistics company Linfox was ordered to restore pay to worker Glen Stutsel, whom it had sacked for making inappropriate comments about managers on Facebook. His dismissal was judged harsh, unjust and unreasonable, ostensibly because the employer had not communicated its social media strategy to him.

Gordon, who advises employers and employees on social media behaviour, says most people get into legal hot water by defaming, misleading or otherwise creating problems for their employer.

Larger companies need a social media policy for their workers ­because the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission holds them liable for misleading and deceptive comments made by employees, even if they weren’t sanctioned by the company itself.

That issue came to light this week when Nauru and Manus Island offshore immigration centre operator Transfield warned staff could be fired for showing support for “incompatible organisations”. A report in The Guardian said that could extend to joining political parties or churches that oppose offshore processing.

Transfield’s social media policy reserved the right to instantly dismiss a worker if an asylum-seeker followed them on Twitter, even without the worker’s knowledge.

Businesses are entitled to protect their interests and prevent posts that reflect badly on them, Gordon says. “Preventing any affiliation with church groups is, however, probably going too far and is a bad look if nothing else,’’ he says. His advice to Transfield: prevent employees from mentioning they work for Transfield on any social media platforms.

It is hard to know how Transfield would react to an incident ­involving a colleague of mine when Facebook was in its infancy. He ­arrived at work and was horrified to find a tagged holiday snap of his drunken self at a refrigerated bar in Hong Kong in his underwear, for all his Facebook friends, including his editor-in-chief and his chief executive, to see.

That employee escaped penalty, but prospective employers are likely to be far less forgiving of a Facebook faux pas.

Recruiters increasingly check Facebook and LinkedIn before ­interviewing potential employees.

“If you’re an HR manager and you’re checking information, you don’t need their consent but most will tell them they’ve done it,’’ Gordon says. Sites such as LinkedIn can help you to find a job, but Gordon warns people to take care who they seek endorsements and recom­mendations from.

Doctors and some professions have a code of ethics that warns against receiving recommendations, while accepting recom­mend­ations from strangers is legally risky.

“If you accept a recommendation from someone you don’t know or for a skill you don’t have, you could be engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct,” Gordon says.

Think before you post

Firms should train staff about the gulf between private and public online comments, says Hughes Public Relations digital and social media consultant Belinda Scott.

She recommends making sure a personal Twitter or Facebook bio states opinions are personal and not those of an employer.

“With myself, I use a personal account with friends and family that’s security activated,” Scott says.

“If you want to have an open account, that’s fine, just be mindful that it’s public and if you’re having a bad day at work you don’t go on and vent. We’re all friends with our work colleagues and that may get back to the boss.’’

She said a good social media user respected the confidentiality of fellow workers, customers and clients and only made reference to material that was publicly accessible.

Adding complexity for employers and their staff were image-driven sites such as Instagram, which can capture someone in their down time wearing a poorly chosen T-shirt with an insulting message or making a gesture that may reflect poorly on the company.

“I’d say it’s best to use the rule of thinking before you comment,” Ms Scott said.

“If you don’t want to see it on the front page of a newspaper or splashed on the nightly news — don’t post it.”