Despite these guidelines, the lines between what is acceptable social media behavior and what companies can legally prohibit often get blurred, many times due to a lack of common sense on the part of the employee.
One example of this comes from 2013, when Applebee's waitress Chelsea Welch was fired from her St. Louis-area restaurant for a photo of a receipt she shared publicly on Reddit. Welch had snapped a photo of a co-worker's receipt on which the customer, a pastor as noted by the customer's signature, had left no tip along with the comment "I give God 10%, why do you get 18?" The photo Welch posted was meant as "a lighthearted joke," but the photo went viral as she neglected to omit the customer's easily legible signature from the receipt before posting the photo to Reddit (Morran, 2013).
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via Consumerist |
Applebee's President Mike Archer told CBS news that "there was no choice but to fire the waitress for violating the customer's privacy rights and the company's social media policy" (Associated Press, 2013), however Welch saw the situation differently.
"'When I posted this, I didn't represent Applebee's in a bad light,'" she said. "'In fact, I didn't represent them at all. I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn't break any specific guidelines in the company handbook -- I checked'" (Morran, 2013).
Applebees responded publicly to the controversy on Facebook with a status stating "We wish this situation hadn't happened." What appeared to be an acceptable use of damage control turned sour later that night when an Applebee's representative began replying to critical comments from the brand's account with long-winded excuses about the situation. In short, the company did not handle the situation well.
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via R.L. Stollar |
It's impossible to say, as someone outside of the company, whether or not Welch truly violated Applebee's' social media policy, so it is difficult to say whether or not I agree with her termination. There is no question, however, that the situation could have been avoided entirely if Welch had cropped the customer's signature out of the otherwise non-identifying photo.
The NLRD edict most pertinent to this incident is number 9, which says "employers remain entitled to enforce important workplace policies, even in the context of social media," a statute under which "employers can politely suggest that employees use good judgment on social media" (Sharp, 2015).
If I were implementing a social media policy for my organization, I would emphasize confidentiality clauses and entitlement to reinforce important workplace policies. Sharing too much information on a company's trade secrets as an 'off-the-clock' representative of the brand can give competition an unfair advantage. To the latter point, employees should not be able to override standard protective workplace policies just because they are using social media on their personal time. The "right to prohibit sexual harassment, workplace violence and threats of violence, sabotage, and/or abusive and malicious activity" is crucial to a healthy and productive work environment (Halpern, 2012).
When an employee is representing his or her organization directly on social media, I would be careful not to implement overly broad or generic "courtesy clauses," as while they typically attempt to protect the company from legal liability, they often dictate too severely how employees can interact with customers over social media. Social media managers should still appear human even when representing their company from a company handle. I would also be careful to prohibit employee rants. Not only does it reflect poorly upon a company when an employee rants about the brand from their personal social media account, but the damage is magnified when said employee accidentally posts their rant to a company social media account to which they have access (see video below). I think that personal and professional social media policy go hand-in-hand.
References:
Associated Press. (2013, February 1). Applebee's waitress fired for posting customer receipt online. CBS News. Retrieved February 25, 2015 from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/applebees-waitress-fired-for-posting-customer-comment-online/
Halpern, S. (2012, December 3). When is Your Company's Social Media Policy an Unfair Labor Practice? Recent NLRB Decisions Offer Long-Awaited Guidance for Employers | The National Law Review. Retrieved February 25, 2015 from http://www.natlawreview.com/article/when-your-company-s-social-media-policy-unfair-labor-practice-recent-nlrb-decisions-
Sharp, M. (2015, February 24). The National Labor Relations Act and workplace social media policies. Social Media Strategies & Tactics. Retrieved from http://sharpscomi.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-national-labor-relations-act-and.html
Stollar, R.L. (2013, February 2). Applebee's overnight social media meltdown: A photo essay. Overturning Tables. Retrieved from https://rlstollar.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/applebees-overnight-social-media-meltdown-a-photo-essay/