Social Media allows you to easily and effectively engage customers, promote your products and services, and develop an online interactive brand that can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Good…

Social media offers your business the chance of  exposure to a far wider audience than ever before which brings with it the possibility of more revenue, increased customer engagement, and invaluable goodwill.

The Bad…

These benefits are not without legal risks.

If your social media is not managed properly your business could be exposed to lawsuits.

There are many laws, regulations, and social media site rules that govern the social media activities of your business and its employees. These laws apply equally to businesses of all shapes, sizes, and across all industries.

As an employer…

1. You are responsible for your employees’ actions when performed within the scope of their employment. Basically, you could be held liable for something that your employee has done on social media. eg defamatory, discriminatory, or harassing social media messages, comments, or tweets.
2. You could also be sued if your employee leaks sensitive customer information or improperly uses your intellectual property and trade secrets (and this may apply even if the employee commits the offense at your office or at home using their personal social media accounts).
3. Discrimination – you could be sued if you DON’T search your employees on social media before engaging them. ‘Negligent hiring’ holds a business responsible if an employee harms someone during their employment and as an employer you could have learned about that person’s likelihood of harmful behaviour by checking their social media.
4. Discrimination – you could be sued if you DO search your employees on social media before engaging them and it can be proven that you based not hiring them on age, race, sex, origin etc.

How do you avoid these risks?

If you have employees, you must implement a social media policy and compliance procedure to help protect your company’s reputation, business relationships, trade secrets, and intellectual property.

The Ugly

Legal action taken against you for not taking this seriously!