Checking Social Media Can Help Employers, but Law Is Ambiguous
There is little guidance about how much monitoring of an employee’s or job candidate’s social media activities is advisable or legal, panelists said Oct. 15 at a discussion hosted by the Professional Services Council and the Equal Employment Advisory Council.
“We’re in the very early stages of the legal development here,” said Mike Eastman, senior counsel and vice president for public policy at the EEAC. “There’s no U.S. Supreme Court case interpreting Facebook posts and employment law.”
According to a report at Bloomberg BNA, government and industry have a responsibility to know what’s being posted to social media, said Charlie Sowell, senior vice president of Salient Federal Solutions, an information technology, training and engineering service company that employs workers with security clearances.