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Ask Slashdot: Companies That Force Employees To Join Social Networks?
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?"
Create a @ Work account, simple This also means you can easily avoid problems such as this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Why would I have any problem working for a company that forced me to join a social network? I wouldn't join with the same profile that I used personally. I would keep my business activities with the site strictly segregated from my personal persona (if any). But if the cost of losing your privacy as an employee to a google or a Facebook accrues almost entirely to your employer, not to you.
Maybe they can make it a condition of your job to join, but can they really make you use it? Just telling them that you don't post much because you're not that kind of guy or gal would be a hard argument for them to refute.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There are so many things an employee can screw up online, I though most of the corporate and government employers would prefer you not be on a social network.
As for the question - who cares? Business accounts are business accounts. You can blog and facebook and plus all you want for the company with a company account. Just to let your business and personal life (accounts) mix. What's so hard about that?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
sign up for any other online service like video conferencing etc.
Create account Company_X_employee_2843753875 and use it for work purposes ONLY. Nobody is forcing you to use it at home, do they?
When you leave the company you give them the account and password so there is no BS like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040
Seems obvious that your employer can require that - why not?
Just make sure that you maintain a really clear separation between work data that put into this account and your private life and accounts.
I'd opt for no linkages whatsoever between the two.
I'd also ask specifically what happens to that account and the associated data if you leave the company. You'll want it to be nukeable when you go.
Three Squirrels
You two are really obsessed with each other.. you should really get a room.
I know what you're thinking: that's stupid.. we're both guys, and I'm not gay.
You're confused about your sexuality, and you're feelings for each other. You're concerned about your repressed latent homosexuality.
But this 2012, and most people are ok with other peoples sexual orientation.
So please, will you two just hook up already? The rest of us are getting tired of this BS.
I think you're the one who's asleep. Skype is owned by Microsoft.
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.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Why any company would trust sensitive internal information to Google is beyond me.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
I'm fairly young and I already start getting reactions along the line of "Are you a criminal or what?" when I tell people I don't have a facebook profile. Also, I'm pretty sure the police would be watching people without public social network presence for they are hiding something for sure. Fortunately for me, they're probably too lazy to get up from facebook.
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.
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.
While you are technically correct, you are ignoring economic realities and pressures. Sometimes just because you *can* quit doesn't mean that you will be able to find another job. There are places in the country where if you lose your job, you will have to move.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
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.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Sign up with a new account and compartmentalize your activities appropriately.
Unless a network enforces one account per individual.
With different emails, profiles, behaviors, etc how would they notice? Likes, interests, posts etc should be completely segregated between professional and personal. Maybe use different names as well, for example the formal Michael on the business account and the familiar Mike on the personal account. They can't really tell from IP. Maybe Michael is a father's account and Mike is a son's - again, avoid personal info like birthday's etc on the business account. A business account at a particular company has no need to contain birthdays, schools, etc.
Facebook uses skype for Video chatting. So you have your regular skype and Facebook's skype.
Why any company would trust sensitive internal information to Google is beyond me.
Why not? They already have it, anyway - I just did a search and found it.
No joke - one place I worked, the best way to find out what was really going on was stick some key executives' names in Google and see what turned up. (No, no criminal records, amazingly enough.)
I cannot say strongly enough how horrifically bad this advice is.
If you make a habit of going to HR when they ask you to do something that is even tangentially related to your job duties and essentially demand a payoff, if you last years it's pretty much a miracle. Hallelujah.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
In this life there are two kinds of problems: My problems and Somebody Else's Problems. If a company is going to make me join Google, I'll do it on their email account, keep it professional, and keep it all work-related. If Google wants to make a stink and my company wants to make a stink, then it sounds like they need to figure something out.
The company I work for is very clear about employees posting as official company representatives (for which they use certain accounts only) and posting something as yourself. We actually (gasp) have written social media guidelines and they provide all the account setup if you have to do this as part of your job.
Companies that aren't doing this and blurring the line between "official company communications channel" and "random employee posting official company news" are setting themselves up for a whole world of hurt, as are people who don't segregate their personal and work lives. The company runs into trouble when an employee generates a following and leaves (voluntarily, involuntarily or the company grows up and has a PR department), and the employee runs into trouble when they leave and can't break the tie to the company.
It's actually in both of their self-interests to keep these things separate, just as a good coder knows that it's good form not to set up dependencies when they are not strictly needed. They are going to come back to bite you sometime later, as good as the idea may seem now.
I distance my work and personal stuff, but they wanted me to follow them, so I did.... no big loss. I've got sufficiently non-mainstream opinions on enough stuff that they really don't want me tying things tight anyway... what with my whole (9-11 was an inside job, Ron Paul for President, Cold Fusion really works, Back to the Gold Standard, we're in the Greater Depression) view of the world... it's non-corporate friendly (besides, corporations aren't people anyway).
I'll patiently wait for JPM and the FED to implode while I read back issues of the stuff from the time monks for a very long time before anyone wants me to be their corporation's friend. ;-)
Be sufficiently human, and only other humans will want to around.... and some will value you highly. Heck, one might even help you make other humans. ;-)
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.
As long as they let me be Rumpelstiltskin.
...damned if you don't?
So, first people complain that their employer is blocking or limiting their internet access because they spend too much time on Facebook, now they're complaining that they're forced to sign up for a Facebook account? Oh boy...
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
This exact topic recently came up at a local Inn of Court, 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.
I was once told that 2 out of every 1 people working at the BBC has a multiple personality disorder
da da da dum indeed.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My employer has an electronic communications policy that forbids employee's from participating in the company's social networking sites unless it is their job to do so. We can't "like" their posts, or respond to tweets etc. I work in the financial industry, and the company is very protective of their credibility. We do have an internal social networking site to promote collaboration.
I think any company that tries to "stuff the ballot box" by making employees sign up for accounts is barking up the wrong tree. They'll have an active looking social networking presence, but it won't yield the benefits that having a real community of clients will.
You can force a horse to water but he might prefer a cold glass of Pepsi; therefore I would join but do it in such a way as to make it a worthless effort on their part. If they have to police everyone to get them to make it useful then it is very expensive. But that is the rebel in me talking... I don't know how the corporate me would respond.
Force me to sign up for a social network? Sure thing. That's way less invasive of my privacy than asking me to pee in a cup.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Rhineland was occupied during that year. Austria & Czechoslovakia hadn't been annexed. Tirpitz and Bismark were barely started. Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact not in place.
So it still wasn't the finished product and there was time to turn things around, had the will been there.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."