There are some companies who tend to ask for their employees social handlers mostly during interviews or after they have been employed. The reason for this is to know who the employees really are. It is believed that you can tell a lot about an individual due to their post or activities online on social media. Are you okay with your employers going through your social media accounts?
Should companies spy on their employees on social media?
- Thread starter eldavis
- Start date
Don't even call it spying but observing. When you work for an organization, you represent the organization and anything you do would always be referenced to the organization. A guy was sacked in a reputable organization in my country because of a leaked Twitter conversation.
Even though social media handles is a private affairs of individuals, I don't see anything wrong in it. Recently, Central Bank of Nigeria is considering compelling the commercial banks to start asking for their customers social media handles as part of kyc.
Given that certain employers would choose to scrutinize the social media accounts of their employees, the workers need to be proactive so as to avoid getting into the bad books of their bosses. An employer can get around this challenge by creating separate personal and professional social media accounts. By sharing only the professional social media accounts with employers, an employee would prevent himself from incurring damages.
When you are working for an organization, people find it hard to differentiate between you, a person and the organization. Armed with that understanding, organizations monitor the social media handles of their staff to be sure the staff are not bringing down the reputation of the organization.
It is going to be a complete waste of time for a company to be doing this kind of thing because I don't see any reason why it is going to be beneficial to the company's business transaction.
It is not a complete waste of time. There must be purpose for every action that are supposing to be taken by the company. The reason why is important is for security reasons.
- Thread starter
- #12
You might have a point though, there are companies who are very strict with how their employees act be it within the company and as well outside the company. They value their image a lot. So they use your activities on social media to determine if you are qualified.
Yeah, that's the truth, I always believe people's post and their activities on social media just portrays who they really are and that's why we shouldn't engage in unnecessary things on our social media platform because the internet never forgets them.
Honestly, I do not feel comfortable if my employer checks the postings in my Whatspp or Telegram accounts. I think this is a matter of privacy and trust. For Facebook account, it does not matter because the content is open to public anyway.
You can't be working in my organization and be posting nudity on social media. It would be as if I run an irresponsible organization. This is true especially of big corporate brands.
No, defiantly not, companies should not spay on their workers on social media, that is a very bad thing to do on their workers, and it is not acceptable thing to do, employees have the right to be free on their off work time, so it is no acceptable to spay on their workers.
- Thread starter
- #20
True but i think it still depends on the kind of arrangements. There are some companies who take their reputation seriously hence they let their employees know that their social media might be check randomly to ensure that they don't do anything that would spoil the reputation of the company. Especially in a situation where you are working or being used as the face of the company in terms of ambassador and so on. But it becomes wrong when the company does not let the employees know.
