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Articles Posted in Social Media and the Workplace

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Grab your popcorn. We need to talk about this Bryan Colangelo Twitter burner-account bombshell.

By Bgnewf [Public domain], from Wikimedia CommonsStick with me here, folks. What I’m about to describe below is one heckuva bizarre social media spectacle. Eric, remind me again, who is Bryan Colangelo? Bryan Colangelo is currently the president of basketball operations and general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). “Currently,” as…

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HR lessons from Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet and ABC’s immediate cancellation of her show

Image Credit: Maxpixel.net (https://www.maxpixel.net/Check-Envelope-Yes-No-Cross-Ankreuzen-Maybe-3413145) On the same day that Starbucks closed more than 8,000 stores to train its employees on implicit bias (full curriculum here), an outspoken Hollywood celebrity stole the headlines with an explicitly-racist tweet. One tweet, no more show. Yesterday, Roseanne Barr wrote on Twitter if the “muslim brotherhood &…

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Remember the woman fired for flipping off the Trump motorcade? Now, she’s suing.

Image Credit: Photofunia.com Remember that time one of your employees: rode her bike, passed the President’s motorcade, was photographed giving him the middle finger, and became a national celebrity/spectacle (depending on your point of view)? For an employee of a Virginia GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR (oops!), it resulted in her termination of…

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Two more learn the hard way that off-the-clock social media use can be a job killer

By Dennis Hill from The OC, So. Cal. – misc 24, CC BY 2.0, Link When will people learn? (Although, if they do, I’ll have less about which to blog.) Hosting a White Supremacist Internet Show Is a Bad Look For a Middle School Teacher It’s a bad look for…

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Do your employees understand the limits of their freedom of speech? If not, educate them.

Image Credit: Pexels.com and http://negativespace.co/photos/computer-in-bed-2/) Do your employees appreciate that what they do on social media on their own time can cost them their job? Do your employees think that “freedom of speech” can save them from getting fired? “F*** Sister Jean -everyone.” Last week, a radio talk-show host in…

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An employee’s bad tweets lead New York Times to fire her on the same day it announced her hiring.

By No machine-readable author provided. Moberg assumed (based on copyright claims). [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsAt least she didn’t have too many personal belongings to pack up. (Too soon?) TheGrio.com has all the details (here): The New York Times fired a writer just hours after they had hired her after they learned…

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Would you fire an employee for something she posted on Facebook … back in high school?

Image Credit: By lil wayne (Youtube) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsI know of one employer that did (allegedly) [Cue music] Fired for posting rap lyrics back in high school. Over the weekend, I read this story from Jessi Turnure on ArkansasMatters.com in which Ms. Turnure reports that the Little Rock Police…

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HR to Vietnamese job applicant, ‘If you no speak English, I will send you home’

Image Credit: Pixabay.com Filed under: WTH HR I don’t have a SHRM-CP or a SHRM-SCP. Heck, I don’t have any HR certifications whatsoever. All I have is my Juris Doctorate ***Googles “Juris Doctorate”*** Yes, that’s what I have. And I specialize in employment law to boot. At least that’s what it says in my…

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Go ahead and pull those old employee handbooks out of the trash!

Just be sure to wipe off the coffee grounds. And cross out all of those outdated references to MySpace and Friendster in the social media policy. What gives, Eric? Well, yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board continued its mad dash to erase all of the last several years of questionable…

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Court stymies employer’s try for plaintiff’s social media passwords in sexual harassment case. But, it did get…

I imagine that, among the reasons that victims fear complaining about sexual harassment, is that spotlight may shine a little too brightly on them. For example, when a plaintiff in a Title VII case claims emotional distress from sexual harassment, the source(s) of that pain will be under the microscope.…