Best Practices for Setting Up Your Company’s Social Media Monitoring Policy

By Sonya Weathers

Posting, tweeting, and sharing are terms that we hear all the time with regards to our social media profiles. It’s commonplace to share comments and photos about our personal lives, behaviors, activities, relationships, and even political and religious viewpoints.

As an HR Professional, you need to ponder how this affects your company.

Social media is permeating the business world. Most companies have a presence on at least one social media channel to promote their products and strengthen their branding messages. Employees also contribute to the overall company reputation by what they share online.

HR must proactively design a policy that addresses social media usage and set guidelines of what is and isn’t acceptable behavior, and make sure it’s followed with a comprehensive social media monitoring process.

Why is social media monitoring important?

Social media screening taps into publicly shared social media information to determine whether someone is successfully representing and promoting the company’s core values. Although widely believed, social media screening and monitoring does NOT focus on personal habits or traits, but highlights behavior that could raise serious concerns in the workplace.

For example:

• Racism. Derogatory comments and likes about a group of individuals may show attitudes that could be harmful for the company’s reputation and potentially spark workplace conflict.

• Sexism. Evidence of sexism on social media may prompt HR to work with the employee so he or she doesn’t behave in a way that gets the company sued down the road.

• Violence. Companies have a responsibility to create a safe working environment. Threats or evidence of violent tendencies on social media could end up affecting the workplace and should be addressed.

• Illegal activity. Employee drug use, embezzlement, and all other illegal activities can end up harming a company’s profitability and image. Finding these red flags is integral to getting a handle on the problem before the incident does damage.

Unlike criminal background checks— which negatively and disproportionately impact minorities and low-income communities— social media data is truer to a person’s character and more accurately represents social demographics. When performed in a thoughtful, compliant, and legal way, reviewing an employee’s social media presence encourages more positive relationships between coworkers and managers, notifies HR of potential burgeoning issues, and promotes a corporate culture of diversity and inclusion.

“70% of employers already use social media in a hiring decision, up by 60% since 2016.”

In 2019, many companies are using social media to screen their job candidates. Why not leverage the information that can be gathered from social media to monitor your current employees, too?

While this is not legal advice, we’ve established some best practices for setting up your company’s social media policy.

Step 1: An essential first step is to establish a clear policy for pre-hire screening as well as for your current employees. A set of guidelines will help your team understand your definition of acceptable online behavior while giving them space to express themselves freely.

Step 2: Next decide how you want to implement social media screening into your process. These should be written down and explained to all employees. Nothing should be done in secret or come as a surprise.

Step 3: Consider hiring a reputable third-party background screener to conduct your employee social media monitoring. Outsourcing investigative work is less expensive and eliminates the risk of a hiring manager viewing protected class information that they now cannot un-see.

As with any policy that impacts an employee and their job position, HR needs to set compliant parameters and make sure all supervisors are aware of them and know how to put them into action.

• Get the employee’s permission to screen in writing. Tell your employees they will be the subject of a background check that will include their social media profiles. Ask them, as you would with any background check, to sign an authorization agreeing to be the subject of a background screening report. With your new hires, make sure your authorization form is evergreen, which means you can use the agreement indefinitely. That way you don’t have to deal with the paperwork hassle of getting them to sign off on a social media check every time you conduct one.

• Promote and practice screening consistency. Use processes for social media screening the same way you conduct other background screening like criminal checks and motor vehicle records searches. Document a list of the sites you screen, the information you search for, and how it will be used. For example, if Instagram isn’t on your list, don’t use it on only younger employees.

• Follow a traditional background screening process. Ideally, information found in a social media search should be used to counsel and address the attitude or behavior. Write out the plan for each of the unacceptable attitudes you could possibly uncover, including how you will deal with each.

• Don’t use it alone. Social media screening is only one facet of a person’s life and won’t paint a complete picture. Continue using other forms of background screening and consistent supervisor reviews to measure every employee’s performance and within your organization’s culture.

Some final social media monitoring Dos and Don’ts.

• DO inform your employees in advance and gain written consent.
• DON’T ask candidates to log into their profiles while you are present.
• DO follow the same FCRA guidelines you would for any other background check.
• DON’T ask employees for their login credentials.

HR is trending toward using social media screening as part of the hiring process but should also consider using it consistently to monitor current employees’ behaviors and attitudes. Identifying dangerous, illegal, and hurtful or violent beliefs early on helps keep the company’s reputation safe from embarrassment and lawsuits.