Issue 11: Is Employer Monitoring of Employee Social Media Justified?

Summary of Sides

The rise of social media and the near ubiquity of its use has led to an increasing trend of employers screening potential hires and monitoring existing employees through their social media activity on sites like Facebook and Twitter. The ethicality of such monitoring has been questioned by ethical scholars Brian Elzweig and Donna K. Pepples argue that employers have a responsibility to their organizations to ensure that employees are not negligent in their actions that directly affect the company or that might negatively reflect upon the company. More to the point, these authors argue that there is no real expectation of privacy on social networking sites and that employers could not be violating any such expectation, as "a general expectation cannot be relied upon just by using the privacy settings" (p. 195). Employers are upholding their duty to the company and not violating any duties to employees as long as they remain within the bounds of the law, in this argument.

Eric Krell, on the other hand, insists that employees do have rights to privacy and that these should extend to their social media. He opens with the statement, "Corporate privacy generally covers customer and employee privacy, with subcategories including the privacy of job applicants" (p. 209). Krell does not really defend this statement, but rather describes a means of ensuring that privacy matters are consistently understood and applied without breaching this right to privacy. A privacy plan that is regularly reviewed, updated, and communicated will protect employee privacy and keep...

Employers should perhaps hold themselves to a higher standard, and following Elzweig and Pepple's opening line of reasoning employers should not pry any deeper than an average member of the public. That is, employers should not require employees to give them broader access to their social media as a condition of employment, and if an employee has all non-friends or non-followers blocked then the company should consider themselves out of luck. What employees do in their private lives can have an effect on the company, but only of these private lives are made public; if employees take care to keep their social media appropriate for public consumption or blocked form public view then employers have no cause to worry and certainly no justification for demanding greater access or knowledge than the public has.
Banking institutions are no different than other companies in this regard. Though there is likely to be greater scrutiny of individuals in powerful or authoritative positions in banks, again what is kept private should remain private and only what is public should matter to the company. A bank manager that leads an excessive lifestyle while homes are foreclosed on might be unseemly and should not advertise this on social media, perhaps, and would warrant some comment by the employer. If the media can't be seen by the public, however, it should not matter to the employer.