More and more frequently, social media is plunging itself into the professional world. Thanks to our previous blog post, we’re all aware of how detrimental a distasteful social media post can be. It may encourage future employers to pass on you for a job position OR it may even get you fired! While social discretion is generally advised, we’ve been coming across companies that are basically REQUIRING caution among social outlets. Like…they make you sign an agreement that’s contingent upon your employment! There are rules you have to follow and there are things (bullet-pointed in said agreement) that will NOT be tolerated if posted on social media. We’re trying to decide whether such hand-holding is necessary or it’s a CYA type situation.

First of all, these social media agreements seem to be most common in jobs where customer service is a huge factor. Basically, employees are forbidden from posting about their awful customer they had that day and disclosing personal information of said customer. We get it, that’s totally understandable. It is kind of surprising to us that employees are actually careless enough to warrant a company-wide agreement. To our dismay, it wasn’t that hard to find a slew of cases where people were pretty much socially (media) inept.

Here’s a good one: “13 Virgin Airlines crew members were fired after publicly discussing aspects of their job on Facebook — they shared the number of times that certain airplace engines had been replaced and that the cabins were infested with cockroaches. They also took the time to insult the passengers who ultimately pay their salaries.” (via BusinessInsider.com) Clearly their Facebook post was in very poor taste and poor judgment and perhaps they deserved what they got. It’s safe to say though that if there were a prior agreement, they would’ve known to stay away from such haphazard posting.

On the contrary, there are some situations where people lost their jobs over something that’s just silly. A young teacher named Ashley Payne lost her teaching job over this picture. To us, it looks like a young woman having a fun night out. She’s obviously over 21, she looks very put together (hardly drunk), and totally in control of herself. There’s no nudity, no profanity…just alcohol, which is totally legal. Those types of situations are the ones that push the limits of social media boundaries. After all, teachers are humans too. But still, you may find some of your teacher friends proceeding with MUCH caution when it comes to alcohol and Facebook. Is it right? Maybe not. But it’s certainly the way it is. (Check the full story here: http://read.bi/1q5m1aw)

These companies who are implementing such agreements are probably smarter than all the rest of us. They know how haphazard many people can be and they’d rather nip it in the bud then let it tarnish their good name. Whichever way you want to spin it though, social rules the world. Post THAT on Facebook…we won’t fire you.