Ask Slashdot: Companies That Force Employees To Join Social Networks? 364
First time accepted submitter rubeon writes "Companies can get a lot of mileage out of social networking services from the likes of Google or Facebook. Chat, document collaboration, and video conferencing using services like Google+ Hangouts or Facebook's Skype are seductive additions to an IT arsenal. But a lot of people have privacy concerns about these services, and there's no shortage of horror stories how these sites track and exploit their users' habits. Would you work for a company that forced its employees to join a social network?"
Is this really a problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Other than Facebook itself, and Google, has anyone actually been asked to join a Social Network by their employer?
(No, Gmail does not count).
I've heard of people being asked to follow twitter, but that's hardly a social network, and its far from bidirectional.
It's a paying job. (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were looking for work, I'd take the job, and just add the bare minimum of details to the site. Get a bit of political clout with the supervisors, then conveniently forget to log in for a week, or a month, or "oh dear, I forgot my password, and I don't know what email account I used to sign up".
Having been unemployed recently, I'd much prefer a paycheck to a bit of already-compromised privacy.
That question actually is rather leading. (Score:5, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work for Jive Software, one of the leading vendors (if not the leading vendor) of Social Business Software, so take it for what you will. I'm just a hosting engineer though - not a marketer.
That said, I think this question actually entails two separate issues. The first one is, will having their employees collaborate socially save them time, money, and energy? I've seen many, many examples of companies coming to depend on social software - there are plenty of examples on Jive's site (and it's not just blowing smoke, I've seen firsthand evidence of this and have even talked to some people on the sales floor who swear by it). Some customers I work with have grown so dependent on social software that they cannot tolerate even a minute of downtime. Social business is, in many ways, the wave of the future, and to criticize companies for trying to get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves is not something I'm prepared to do.
The other question is: Should the company provide a sandboxed environment for this kind of collaboration, or should they force their employees to use solutions that potentially violate their privacy or have other issues? I'm not going to say that any of the solutions out there such as Facebook have those issues necessarily, but they are obviously very much less sandboxed and do not have the interests of corporate and personal privacy in mind near as much as a vendor whose software can be sandboxed to provide some safety for personal information and company secrets.
At Jive we eat our own dogwood, and we use a social instance of our own software in the company, and I can't imagine working without it. But if a company were to force me to collaborate on publicly available sites where my grandmother (for example) would also post, I'd seriously wonder what they were smoking.
Come on, companies don't hire criminals (Score:5, Interesting)
Can information leak in? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't use social networks, so don't know a lot of their details. But one complaint that I commonly hear is that people can tag photos of you, and even if you don't have an account, Facebook will link this information together to create a hidden profile of you.
If your employer requires you to use your real name and information when signing up for an external social network, and your friends who use that same social network post pictures and other information about your personal life, is it possible that the network will associate this information with your work account, which will then bring it into your bosses radar?
If it is a private company network, then no problem. But if it is a public social network, it seems like it could create the same sort of problems that occur when bosses force you to friend them with your personal social network account.
Re:Sure I would (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, except depending on facebook's "loose" vs "strict" interpretations of their own terms of service, you're violating their EULA by creating that second account.
Of course it's bullshit, just like it was bullshit for google+ to be tied to a real id, and that a social network was an identity service.
It got dropped from the media whcih means:
1) The law still isn't clear on it, and won't be for years
2) They never recanted it, so whenever a story gets loud enough to make the front line news, they can use it to either create a smokescreen or attack our privacy even further with it
3) Any pointy-haired politician that wants to win points with actors/actresses wanting to shut down an unofficial page that's more popular than the official one will be vulnerable to the right kind of pressure.
When it drops off the front page, without a formal, written apology, geeks lose.
Re:They Can Make You Join... (Score:0, Interesting)
I'm dealing with this bullshit in broadcasting. I gave up Facebook et.al. due to massive privacy concerns and discussions as to who really owned my data. I've been told time and again "just get over it." So, I've made it a policy not to help those people when their technology breaks.
lol Captcha = "cancels"
Re:It's a paying job. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. Part of the interview process at my last job (internet marketing startup) was to check prospects' scores on online tools that measured "engagement" in blogging, Twitter, Facebook, foursquare, Google+, YouTube, etc. The company would also send out emails "requesting" that employees post/Tweet/Like events, books, blog posts, awards, or webinars related to the company, made by friends of/investors in the company, and so on. If you didn't have social media "juice," they weren't interested.
Even for tech support positions they weighed social media marketing knowledge alongside tech knowledge, because you had to defend (or upsell) the product on support calls. It's to the point now where they changed the job title of the phone support position to "Entry-level *ub*potter," presumably because they weren't getting people with marketing knowledge.
They'd ask us to mob people they wanted as guests on their weekly marketing show. I don't know what they expect when they do that; it struck me as annoying [twylah.com].
They're also extremely aggressive about responding to negative or skeptical posts and comments, to the point where they'll join MetaFilter [metafilter.com] to post a sales-pitch response [metafilter.com] to a question.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this really a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Other than Facebook itself, and Google, has anyone actually been asked to join a Social Network by their employer?
My employer - a university department - decided it needed to have a social networking presence. Since I'm the main web guy, that basically amounted to "we want you to join Facebook and Twitter".
We use it these tools to disseminate news about our department and to try to keep more frequent contact with our alumni. But that's as far as it goes - as far as I know, they couldn't care less about my personal activities on there (and my personal Facebook profile is actually separate from I use for work; but don't tell Facebook that! And I don't use Twitter personally). I've made it a point to not "friend" my boss nor most of the faculty who've asked. My (infrequent) personal posts are all set to "friends only"; and I do my bet not to say anything that could come back to bite me.
Of course it helps that I'm a really boring person.
Birthdays (Score:5, Interesting)
With different emails, profiles, behaviors, etc how would they notice?
For one thing, correlations between people tagged in the same photo.
avoid personal info like birthday's etc on the business account.
As I understand it, all major social networks operating in the United States collect date of birth to be COPPA compliant.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:2, Interesting)
It's perfectly reasonable and legal to have a name that you use only for work. There's even terms for it in certain professions (pen name, stage name, "dancing" name, etc.) It's accepted practice in any field where you're expected to maintain a public persona. If your work requires you to have an account on a social network, they must also allow you to use an alternate name and provide all the substantiation (email address, bio and such) for that name that's needed to sign up for the account.
Re:Why not, it's just another work tool (Score:2, Interesting)
A very bad idea - for the company (Score:4, Interesting)
This exact topic recently came up at a local Inn of Court [innsofcourt.org], and after a bit of discussion, the consensus among the judges and attorneys present was that the company would be liable for all the stupid things the employee did with that social network account.
There is a real reason companies typically have one single spokesman and many have a PR department.
Re:What?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know why you're picking on FNC here, but socialism doesn't stop people from leaving their jobs. It discourages hiring and even prohibits firing, and there are plenty of regulations telling people where they can and cannot work.
Maybe if you go to a communist country like Cuba or North Korea, but not in any of the more civilized countries you call socialist like Europe. Yes, hiring an employee here in Norway is a much bigger commitment here than in the US, because normally you have a mutual one month termination period for the first six months and three months after that. Normally people work through that period rather than the two week check as I've understood is common in the US and most people find themselves new work in this period so it's not even remotely as hostile as the US. Regardless of that companies will often let you go earlier if you've left for one of their competitors, but this is a voluntary agreement both parties must agree to.
Firing is far from prohibited but unlike the US you may not fire people for any or no reason. Essentially there are three ways to be terminated. The first is because the company has less work, is terminating stores or offices or restructuring that makes people redundant. Generally you can't hire with one hand and fire with the other, unless you've sacked them for work performance (I'll get to that) they generally have a preferred right to other open positions they're qualified for, if you're moving offices and that sort of thing. In short, downsizing is legal but it must be real.
The second way to get terminated is for poor work performance, and I admit this is hard. Basically the key word is document, document, document. You must show that the work performance has been deemed unacceptable, that the person has been informed of this, that they've been given sufficient opportunity to improve themselves and so on. Most often it's smaller businesses that either don't do all the steps, or they have too excessive reactions because they can't afford the dead weight. Larger companies generally do manage to get it right, but due to the cost and termination period involved they generally avoid to.
The third and final way is instant termination, which is pretty much like termination for cause in the US. Note that breaking internal rules is mostly not covered and would go under poor work performance, it is mostly criminal activity like theft, fraud or sabotage and willfully abusing or leaking confidential information, refusal to work and that sort of thing. If the facts of the case are unclear employees may end up suspended instead, which is not yet a termination.
That said, there are a lot of anti-discrimination laws and people given special protection by law, like for example people on sick leave or maternity leave. It does happen, I know a person that was terminated on sick leave but the company was downsizing almost 50% and if an office is closing then obviously everyone lose their jobs, but under normal circumstances they're practically immune to termination. Basically as long as they're doing their job when they're fit to work, you're not permitted to fire them no matter how inconvenient the leaves are.
Not sure what you mean about rules where people can get work, I can get work in pretty much any public or private job. A few require security clearances and a few require checking my criminal record e.g. to get work as a teacher, but for the most part every job is available to me. Of course all the usual caveats with who knows who and all that applies, but that's the same in any country. Oh and while we do have exempt workers, they're extremely few - any normal professional is still an employee with overtime pay. That cuts down on a lot of crap.
Re:My response to the manager or HR person.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Employers cannot tell me what to do in my private life with my own name (besides telling me not to do illegal things or things that do involve the company). My job function would never be that kind of thing. Maybe some kinds of jobs would need it (TV news personality, HR investigator, etc ... but I don't do those kinds of jobs). I did set up a Skype account for teleconferencing, but that was in the company name, not my own (the company owns it, not me). But my company has no rights to my identity. Firing me over this means I have to pick which one of my 5 lawyers friends is going to make a boatload.
Re:That question actually is rather leading. (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, you use terms like "testimonials" "when significant and concrete cost savings can be proven" "tangible and measurable benefits" "an uphill battle" "get on the bandwagon and realize the benefits for themselves".
It's your tone. It's worse then marketer, you come off as a salesman. I'm sorry, but it's true. To stop that, well, you'd have to stop trying to sell Jive. But it looks like you're paid push the company motto. Or at least expected to.
And this is my problem with companies getting their weedly little fingers into social sites. Corporations aren't social, they just want to push their goods and make a buck. If they get their employees to be their own 50cent army, it degrades the social scene. Tragedy of the commons.
And this got voted up? Why? Hell, at this point I'm paranoid enough that I suspect your fellow Jive employees are responsible. It's "encouraged" after all. So can I trust Slashdot moderation?