If you're interested in the ever-shifting convergence ofemployment practices liability and the ubiquitiousnessof social media, you might want to keep an eye on a lawsuitrecently filed in Connecticut by the National Labor RelationsBoard, claiming a woman was unfairly fired for posting negativecomments about a supervisor on her Facebook page.

From the New York Times article:

The labor relations board announced last week that it had fileda complaint against an ambulance service, American Medical Responseof Connecticut, that fired an emergency medical technician,accusing her, among other things, of violating a policy that barsemployees from depicting the company “in any way” on Facebook orother social media sites in which they post pictures ofthemselves.

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Lafe Solomon, the board's acting general counsel, said, “This isa fairly straightforward case under the National Labor RelationsAct — whether it takes place on Facebook or at the water cooler, itwas employees talking jointly about working conditions, in thiscase about their supervisor, and they have a right to do that.”

Although the employer states that the woman was fired forreasons other than her Facebook griping (in which several fellowdisgruntled employees commiserated), the basis of the casecauses one to think about whether formal company policiesregarding social media use by employees outside theworkplace are legally enforceable.

In another recent example, read here about an administrator at an IllinoisCatholic-affiliated university who was fired from her positionbecause of a newspaper wedding announcement about her Iowa marriageto her long-time lesbian partner. The university's rationale wasthat even though the woman was openly gay in the workplace, “… Bypublicizing the marriage ceremony in which she participated in Iowashe has significantly disregarded and flouted core religiousbeliefs which, as a Catholic institution, it is our mission touphold.”

Social media proponents have said from the beginning of the SMboom that authenticity is a prerequisite for good social mediaengagement. I guess my question would be, how authentic is tooauthentic? (And I don't mean authentic like Brett Favre, either.)

It's one thing for drunken frat boys to get in trouble withtheir schools, parents and potential employers because ofincriminating pictures on their FB pages; it's entirely anotherthing when an employee's opinions and activities beyond the reachof the workplace — whether in the new social media or in moretraditional mediums — are used as ammunition to get them fired.

As a trusted advisor, what would you suggest to an employerclient about how to handle these cases? As an employer yourself,what would you do? And as a human being, how “authentic” do youthink you can be in today's interconnected world?