Violating company social networking policy

Violating Company Social Networking Policy
The main objective of employment law is to protect employees from discrimination at the work place. Discrimination at work place comes in different forms and therefore it is important for HR managers and professional to stay on guard and remain aware of the recent changes in discriminatory practices.
One of the cases of alleged employee discrimination was reported when an employee of an automobile company was fired for posting photos on Facebook regarding an accident (Keller & Corey, 2012). The NLRB rules in favor of the employer because the employee’s activity was found to be concerted and was also not protected by federal laws (Keller & Corey, 2012). NLRB ruled in favor of the employer because it is important that the activity should be concerted in order to provide relief of employee in such cases. In this case, the employee was properly disciplined and therefore there was nothing wrong in it, according to the ruling and judgment of NLRB.
I agree with the decision of NLRB because it is also important to protect the rights of the employer. There are guidelines which NLRB has to follow and in this case they have followed the guidelines. NLRB makes sure that rights of employees are not violated and employment terms are such that use of social media activity against employer does not become grounds for termination (Belicove, 2012). But the social media activity should be concerted, meaning that the employee should take up the issue with other employees before posting something online regarding his or her employer. This was not done and therefore this case was decided in favor of the employer. The decision was accurate because it was based on the laws and guidelines of NLRB and the termination of employee was not legal because he did not talk about the issue with his fellow employees.
The decision would not have been taking in a positive way in any organization by the employees. Employees would feel that they were violated and employer got off because of a technical issue. The issue would have created many work related problems and morale issues in any organization. Employees have a naturally tendency to think positively regarding their fellow employees. Also because in this case the employee posted something that was very true and therefore sympathies of employee would always be with him. This would worsen the employee relations in any company and more and more of such cases would come up which will negatively affect employee productivity.
It is best to communicate this incident to the employees clearly. Employees should be informed that they are part of a family and any grievances must be taken up to proper authorities. There should be a way in which grievances and problems should be handled in a company because a company is like a family. This approach would be best in communicating such a decision to the employees.
It is also best to have a social media policy because in today’s world social media has become increasingly important. It is therefore important for firms to devise a social media policy because most of their employees would be using social media. Also employee productivity is affected as a result of using social media on work (Doyle, 2012). A social media policy should be accurate and clear, should include be respectful to employees, and should ban use of social media in the workplace (Entrepreneur Magazine, 2012).
References
Belicove, M. (2012). Finally, Guidance on Employer Social-Media Policies. Entrepreneur. Retrieved from http://www. entrepreneur. com/blog/223951
Belicove, M. (2012). NLRB Slams Costco On Social Media Use Policy: What It Means For Your Business. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www. forbes. com/sites/mikalbelicove/2012/09/28/nlrb-slams-costco-on-social-media-use-policy-what-it-means-for-your-business/
Doyle, A. (2012). Violating Company Social Networking Policy. About. com. Retrieved from http://jobsearch. about. com/od/onlinecareernetworking/a/violating-company-social-networking-policy. htm
Keller, D. & Corey, M. (2012). NLRB upholds Facebook firing, but …. Lexology. Retrieved from http://www. lexology. com/library/detail. aspx? g= 5182cd55-175e-41b9-8d1f-5ae0051953ec