Employee Social Media Posts on 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne with Tom Elliott

By Sue Ellson

Topic: Employee Social Media Posts

Date: 4 September 2024

Media Outlet: 3AW 693AM Melbourne https://www.3aw.com.au

Broadcaster / Interviewer: Tom Elliott

Producer: Leanne Haines

Duration: 00:04:46

Time of show: 10:10am

Audio Recording:

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJMrXOxPdZ8

Employee Social Media Posts on 3AW 693AM Radio Melbourne with Tom Elliott and Sue Ellson

Transcript

Weeks ago we talked about the Right to Disconnect. What that means is that you know if you if you are paid to work 9 to 5 Monday to Friday um that if the boss rings you at 7:00 o’clock on a Friday night you can legally refuse to take the call or you cannot respond to an email or a text until you’re back at work the following Monday. Now you have to be reasonable you know if if there’s a crisis and only you can help solve it, it would be reasonable for the boss to contact you and reasonable for you to get back if indeed you don’t accept the call the first time around.

The Trade Union movement wants to take this a bit further. They want people’s private social media posts to be exempt from scrutiny uh from scrutiny by the boss. Now obviously if you’re just posting photos of the family and what you do on the weekend I mean there’s no reason your boss would have any interest in that other than if they’re friends with you but if you’re criticising the business for which you work or you know saying publicly that your boss is stupid and hopeless I I think the boss has a could reasonably sort of pull you up on that.

Our next guest is a Career Development Practitioner Sue Ellson. Good morning.

Hi Tom.

What do you think about this? I mean if if I stick things on social media in my in my own time.

Mmm.

You know does my employer have a right to look and possibly pull me up on them?

Well it really depends on the social media policy of the organization so a lot of organizations have them a lot of the organizations I go to nobody knows where it is, nobody’s read it, nobody’s been trained on it so yeah that’s a bit of a difficult one. But what the union movement is looking at is is basically giving people almost carte blanche to say whatever they like and I think that as an employee we have a duty of care to our employer to uphold their brand values and their code of conduct and their vision and all of that sort of thing that should be conveyed to us and if I was the employee of the government I definitely wouldn’t be allowed to go out and say you know that sort of thing that would be part of the contract

Yeah.

Working in the government.

So I had to look at my um employment contract because I only did it late last year so it’s still relatively fresh and it does say that I cannot do anything whether it’s a social media post or indeed what I say on air or even in just my own personal behaviour which brings my employer into disrepute and that’s 24 hours a day seven days a week.

Yep.

I think that’s reasonable don’t you?

Well I do. I do and I mean I actually live my life now.

Mmm.

As though there’s a drone hovering above me watching everything I do.

Yes and and likewise so do I and I don’t even include any pictures of my children online and you know I’ve taken it to that next level and I basically assume, I’ve been online since 2001 and I assume that anything I put into a computer is public even if I’ve got all the privacy settings there.

What about what about when you’re trying to or you’re thinking about hiring someone?

Mmm hmm.

Is it okay to have a look at their social media um output whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok or whatever?

Mmm hmm.

And sort of judge them based on what you see there. Like for example if every single weekend they’re at a dance party and they appear to be taking drugs.

Mmm.

Or you know there’s photos of them passed out because they drink too much on a weekly basis.

Mmm.

Is that the sort of thing that you could use to decide whether or not to hire them?

Well technically speaking if it’s publicly available you can look at it and I heard a statistic some years ago that said 75% of people will Google you before a job interview and 95% will Google you before they give you a job offer and that includes not just Google but also the social media platforms so if somebody was looking it that and they had concerns about it they could show that to the candidate and say look it looks like you’re at a lot of parties you know can you please explain and they say well look I just love to dance it might be nothing to do with drugs.

Mmm.

So I mean you would have that opportunity to give that to the person but another interesting story I heard yesterday. There was somebody who was trying to get a modeling gig and the reason they did or didn’t get it was depending on the number of followers they had on Instagram so then there’s the other employer who says well I’ll only hire the model who’s got 30,000 followers so that when they put their pictures up online I’ll get an extra 30,000 views out of it so yeah there there’s lots of to-ing and fro-ing in all of this. But yes what you cannot do is you cannot ask the employee for their login details so that you can go and do the forensic search within their profile and technically I think it’s you know probably not that great if you decided to be friends with them on something like Facebook. Connection on LinkedIn is a bit different but friends on Facebook and then check out all their relatives I don’t know I just think that’s a bit of a stretch.

Yeah.

So what’s generally public I would say would be generally okay.

All right thank you for your time Sue Ellson there Career Development Practitioner.

Social Share

EMPLOYEE SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS // Are you aware that a coalition of unions in Australia are pushing for employees to be allowed to post whatever they like on social media without fear of reprisal? As you can imagine, employers are concerned.

Tom Elliott interviewed me on 3AW Radio Melbourne 693AM 📻 and we discussed:

✅ social media policy awareness and training
✅ what is reasonable to post on social media
✅ assuming that all online content is public
✅ social media viewing before a job offer
✅ asking candidates for information about their content
✅ people attracting jobs with a social media following

Enjoy the show online at https://sueellson.com/blog/employee-social-media-posts-3aw-693am-radio-melbourne-with-tom-elliott

Thanks to Producer Lauren Haines for reaching out!

➡️ Are you aware of your work’s social media policy? Have you had any training on what is or is not allowed?

#3awmelbourne #employees #socialmedia #tomelliott #sueellson