The Journal Record
By April Wilkerson
April 20, 2011

Crowe & Dunlevy director Courtney Warmington warns employers and employees that use of social media channels can constitute liability on both sides. Employers need to educate employees on how the use of social media can impact their jobs.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re doing so much training and education in this area,” Warmington said. “To educate employees that they really do need to have some separation of their social networking and their job. We can’t stop them from saying anything about their job, but we can stop them from doing things that violate HIPAA and our policies.”

If an employee makes defamatory statements on a social media site, it is possible that his or her employer could be held liable for those statements if the employee was acting within the scope of his employment. Employees often mistakenly assume that the First Amendment provides them absolute protection when they’re posting things about their employer on a social media site like Facebook, Warmington said.

“The First Amendment doesn’t say you can walk around and say anything about your employer that you want to,” she said. “The First Amendment says the government can’t step in and infringe on your right to free speech, and there are some limitations to that. But if you have employees saying, ‘I have the right to say whatever I want because I have a right to free speech,’ that doesn’t apply in the context of the employer-employee relationship in the private sector. Even in the public employer context, you still don’t have a bubble of protection around you.”

An employer does need to keep an eye on a crucial part of the law that does protect employees: when they’re serving as whistle-blowers. Many pieces of the law protect whistle-blowers, Warmington said.

http://journalrecord.com/2011/04/19/social-media-poses-health-care/