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Articles Posted in Social Media and the Workplace

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Plaintiff-employee destroys Facebook posts about her case; court destroys her

Last month, a daughter’s Facebook post cost her father an $80K age-discrimination settlement (more on that here). Last week, with some Facebook shenanigans, the plaintiff in a sexual harassment case screwed herself over. (See what I did there?) Heather Painter used to work for Dr. Aaron Atwood D.D.S. According to Ms.…

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What the EEOC wants companies to know about social media and employment discrimination

Yesterday, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a public meeting at which it discussed, well, you read the lede. Don’t miss this one employers; the full 411 is after the jump… * * * (Yeah, I’m playing Bjork. Haters can take a hike…) As I was saying, yesterday,…

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Accessing Your Employee’s Social Media Accounts May Violate Federal Law

  Back in 2011, when y’all were Tebowing, planking and winning, I was blogging about this case where an employer allegedly updated its employee’s Facebook page and tweeted from her Twitter account without her permission while she was on leave from work following a car accident. The Stored Communications Act…

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Daughter’s Facebook post costs dad $80k employment settlement

I’ll bet the father didn’t “like” that so much.  Get it? Dad is the former headmaster at a school in Florida. When the school failed to renew his employment contract, he sued for age discrimination and retaliation. Eventually the two sides settled, with the school to pay $10,000 in back…

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I’m using pitcher Carlos Martinez’s porn-filled Twitter feed to teach you a social-media-and-the-workplace lesson.

The other day, Deadspin tweeted this headline: Carlos Martinez’s Twitter favorites: a big ol’ wall of porn http://t.co/SA3qss6nrr — Deadspin (@Deadspin) February 24, 2014 Now, before you say anything, remember, I read Deadspin for their keen insight into the world of sports. And sometimes that means reading a post about…

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Employees who social network at work for 20 minutes are happier — and no less productive

That social media policy of yours. The one in which you begrudgingly tolerate employee social media use on their own time and roadblock their efforts to use it at work. You may want to revise it. ASAP! Chad Brooks at Business News Daily reports here about a recent study by…

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Social media? Anti-harassment? No workplace policy can prevent something this stupid…

On MLK Day, with a few of my co-workers and my four-year-old son, I performed community service. We went to a local center and spent a few hours making peanut butter sandwiches to feed the homeless. Actually, we spent a half-hour or so making sandwiches. Most of us spent the…

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New Year’s Resolution: Social media training for your workforce

The king is dead. Long live the king! Teens are beginning to drop Facebook like a bad habit; instead, taking advantage of messaging apps like What’sApp, Snapchat, and Instagram to social network. According to a GlobalWebIndex study highlighted in this Forbes article from Haydn Shaughnessy, “from Q2 2012 to Q3…

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The most clicked, hella-best HR-compliance updates from 2013!!!

Ah, it was a good year at the ole Handbook. Total web traffic was up over fifty percent from 2012. And average time per visit was down over 20%, which is fine by me. I pad my important stats, while discouraging loitering. And we got our first visitor from Uzbekistan.…

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Teacher fired over Facebook groping photo could get her job back

Back in October, I blogged here about Ms. Cook, an Idaho school teacher who lost her job after her employer learned about a photo on her Facebook page that showed her boyfriend touching her chest. (Oh, fine, here’s the pic) What made this story unique — yeah, I know, teacher…