Organizational Monitoring of Social-Media Web Sites, a Growing but Alarming Trend

Organizational Monitoring of Social-Media Smacks of Big Brotherdom

Companies in increasing measure are monitoring their employees’ activities on social-networking sites. This growing trend is alarming and merits very serious concern.

Surveillance of Social-Media Web Sites Impinges on Freedom of Speech (Expression)

While it is true that people should use common sense in posting on social-media sites, it is also true that companies who monitor employees and job applicants are skating on very thin ice relative to violating people’s right to freedom of speech. If employees and job applicants have to couch every word they say on social-networking sites because of surveillance by companies then their freedom of speech, or expression, is being taken away from them.

Monitoring of Social-Media Sites Opens Doors to Litigation

Additionally, organizations that use social-networking web sites to screen out job applicants are treading on thin ice when it comes to disparate impact or even disparate treatment. If it is true that people who use social-networking sites are more commonly screened out than people who do not, companies are laying themselves wide open vis-à-vis potential litigation.

Monitoring of Social-Web Sites by Companies Smacks of Self-Serving Expediency

Moreover, using social-networking sites to monitor employees and to screen out job applicants smacks of self-serving expediency because companies which do so are not exercising due diligence in using a number of tools to measure job-applicant suitability for positions. In sum, what a person says on a social-networking site often has no bearing on their suitability or qualifications for a given position and companies could well be losing out by eliminating skilled well-matched people from consideration just because of their monocular monitoring of social-networking sites.