Toops Scoops: When Social Media Becomes Too Authentic

If you're interested in the ever-shifting convergence of employment practices liability and the ubiquitiousness of social media, you might want to keep an eye on a lawsuit recently filed in Connecticut by the National Labor Relations Board, claiming a woman was unfairly fired for posting negative comments about a supervisor on her Facebook page.

From the New York Times article:

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

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

Although the employer states that the woman was fired for reasons other than her Facebook griping (in which several fellow disgruntled employees commiserated), the basis of the case causes one to think about whether formal company policies regarding social media use by employees outside the workplace are legally enforceable.

In another recent example, read here about an administrator at an Illinois Catholic-affiliated university who was fired from her position because of a newspaper wedding announcement about her Iowa marriage to her long-time lesbian partner. The university's rationale was that even though the woman was openly gay in the workplace, “… By publicizing the marriage ceremony in which she participated in Iowa she has significantly disregarded and flouted core religious beliefs which, as a Catholic institution, it is our mission to uphold.”

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

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

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