Social media workplace danger zone

MEDIA SAVVY: Hope Global Human Resources Vice President Dorothy Mattiello, human resources assistant Jen Vierra and Human Resources Manager Connie Vitorino. The company doesn’t use social media during the hiring process. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
MEDIA SAVVY: Hope Global Human Resources Vice President Dorothy Mattiello, human resources assistant Jen Vierra and Human Resources Manager Connie Vitorino. The company doesn’t use social media during the hiring process. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Hope Global, a company headquartered in Cumberland that makes shoelaces, parachute cords and other engineered textile products, consciously refrains from using social media when checking references while hiring.
“We do not check private social media accounts, but we have an aggressive [traditional] reference check,” said Dorothy Mattiello, the company’s vice president of human resources.
For such questions as “Are you married?” or “How old are you?” she said, “If I can’t ask those questions legally, I’m not going to ask those questions by going through social media, because that’s like going through the back door.”
Federal law prevents employers from discriminating based on age or marital status, as well as other criteria like race and gender. The company has 650 employees worldwide, with about one-third of those based in Cumberland, Mattiello said.
Hope Global’s policy of avoiding social media when checking references is actually far more stringent than what could be required by a proposed social media privacy bill that at least one lawmaker, like his counterparts across the country, is planning to put before colleagues in 2014.
Prohibiting employers from coercing access to job applicants’ social networking accounts is one of the stipulations in a bill dubbed the Social Media Privacy Act that Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, and others succeeded in getting passed in the House this past summer.
A companion bill stalled in the Senate, so Kennedy is planning to introduce it again in the upcoming session.
The bill, which also aims to establish a social media privacy law for students, would prohibit asking employees or job applicants for passwords, asking for an employer to be on a contact list, asking the employee or applicant to change their privacy settings, or asking the employee or applicant to access their personal site in the employer’s presence.
“I don’t tweet or use a Facebook account because I’ve heard of so many problems with social media accounts,” Kennedy said in a recent phone interview. “I just think fair is fair, whether we’re talking [about] a college individual or somebody who is going to get employed. There are reasons people use privacy settings. If the information is in front of a firewall you’re entitled to discover it; if it is behind a firewall or privacy settings, you are not. You are not as an employer allowed to ask for that information.” If it became law, the bill would not apply to content that is publicly available.
The bill also provides an exemption for allegations of employee misconduct or workplace violation of applicable laws and regulations, so long as the information is used only for the appropriate investigation or proceeding.
Social networking on Facebook, Twitter and other sites has become so ubiquitous that some employers find it useful to look at job applicants’ accounts, says Hillary Davis, policy associate of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. And that is not necessarily a problem for users who choose to put personal information knowingly in the public domain, she said.
“[Hope Global] has a wise policy,” said Davis. “We prefer people weren’t using social media as a background check and trying to root around in people’s lives. If somebody felt they had been discriminated against for their public profile that would be a matter for the courts. But that exact issue of age and marital status [illustrates] why we feel people should have the option of keeping that information private and not being forced to give that information to their employer.”
An exemption successfully added to this year’s House-passed bill, due to the lobbying of the Rhode Island Banker’s Association and Fidelity Investments, would not restrict the employer from gaining access to an employee’s or applicant’s social media account if the employer had to do so in order to comply with screening or monitoring in connection with federal regulations governed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Act.
The Rhode Island ACLU has had no complaints about social media use in hiring or on the job, said Davis, but it is becoming an issue nationally.
Maryland, one of the first states to enact prohibitions, reacted to a case where state employers tried to gain access through a log-in as part of a reinstatement interview to a Department of Corrections employee’s Facebook page, after that employee returned from a leave of absence, she said. “It’s something everybody agrees shouldn’t happen in Rhode Island and we should put these protections in place before it becomes an issue,” she said. “We worked very closely in support of [Kennedy’s] legislation. It’s similar to legislation that’s cropping up all over the country.”
States that have enacted prohibitions this year include Arkansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington. Illinois and New Jersey updated laws this year that were passed in 2012. Other states that passed laws last year include California, Delaware, Maryland and Michigan, she said.
At Warwick-based Atrion, an information technology company with about 200 employees, and the Washington Trust Co. in Westerly, which has more than 500 workers, common sense and ethics hold sway when it comes to hiring and employee monitoring generally.
“In reference to our standard practice on how to address any issues or changes to policies,” Nancy Contillo, director of people service at Atrion, said in an email, “We refer to HR best practices, federal and state laws and regulations, along with company policies that are in place and encompass what is and what is not acceptable behavior in the workplace concerning confidentiality, ethical behavior and invasion of privacy.”
That said, Atrion has no social media policy, though it actively avoids the behaviors Kennedy is seeking to outlaw, Contillo said.
Washington Trust does have a social media policy, but it does not explicitly address hiring or privacy issues, said Elizabeth Eckel, senior vice president of marketing.
“We do not use social media for hiring,” Eckel said. “We clearly follow all regulatory rules and regulations in our hiring practices.”
Use of social media in the workplace “is a very hot topic because it’s become so popular, and one that we continue to monitor and review, and revise our policies as needed,” said Eckel. “At the end of the day, it’s going to go back to your general code of ethics. Our social media policy now is basically, do the right thing. If you have any question that it’s not the right thing to say or do, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it.” •

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