As social media becomes increasingly important to both our personal and professional lives, growing numbers of employers are looking to create and implement social media polices in the workplace. Social media policies can benefit employers in several ways. Recently, social media policies have been created to govern the use of social media in the screening of job applicants, monitor or restrict employee use of social media sites at work, and even to monitor employee use of social media outside of work. Additionally, for employers whose employees utilize work-sponsored social media accounts, a social media policy may be necessary to monitor what is disseminated from those accounts.
However, employers’ use of social media policies as a tool in hiring and firing has come under strict scrutiny after raising several public policy concerns.
