NEW LAW IN GERMANY TO STOP CHECKING FACEBOOK

New Law to Stop Companies from Checking Facebook Pages in Germany

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,713240,00.html

Good news for jobseekers who like to brag about their drinking exploits on Facebook: A new law in Germany will stop bosses from checking out potential hires on social networking sites. They will, however, still be allowed to google applicants.

Lying about qualifications. Alcohol and drug use. Racist comments. These are just some of the reasons why potential bosses reject job applicants after looking at their Facebook profiles.

According to a 2009 survey commissioned by the website CareerBuilder, some 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. And some 35 percent of those employers had rejected candidates based on what they found there, such as inappropriate photos, insulting comments about previous employers or boasts about their drug use.

But those Facebook users hoping to apply for a job in Germany should pause for a moment before they hit the "deactivate account" button. The government has drafted a new law which will prevent employers from looking at a job applicant's pages on social networking sites during the hiring process.

According to reports in the Monday editions of the Die Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung newspapers, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has drafted a new law on data privacy for employees which will radically restrict the information bosses can legally collect. The draft law, which is the result of months of negotiations between the different parties in Germany's coalition government, is set to be approved by the German cabinet on Wednesday, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Although the new law will reportedly prevent potential bosses from checking out a candidate's Facebook page, it will allow them to look at sites that are expressly intended to help people sell themselves to future employers, such as the business-oriented social networking site LinkedIn. Information about the candidate that is generally available on the Internet is also fair game. In other words, employers are allowed to google potential hires. Companies may not be allowed to use information if it is too old or if the candidate has no control over it, however.

Toilets to Be Off-Limits

The draft legislation also covers the issue of companies spying on employees. According to Die Welt, the law will expressly forbid firms from video surveillance of workers in "personal" locations such as bathrooms, changing rooms and break rooms. Video cameras will only be permitted in certain places where they are justified, such as entrance areas, and staff will have to be made aware of their presence.

Similarly, companies will only be able to monitor employees' telephone calls and e-mails under certain conditions, and firms will be obliged to inform their staff about such eavesdropping.

The new law is partially a reaction to a number of recent scandals in Germany involving management spying on staff. In 2008, it was revealed that the discount retail chain Lidl had spied on employees in the toilet and had collected information on their private lives. National railway Deutsche Bahn and telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom were also involved in cases relating to surveillance of workers.

Online data privacy is increasingly becoming a hot-button issue in Germany. The government is currently also working on legislation to deal with issues relating to Google's Street View service, which is highly controversial in the country because of concerns it could violate individuals' privacy.

dgs

MY THOUGHTS

i think the best way to deal with privacy is to keep it. zip it.  the less private matters you share, the more privacy you keep.  it pays to be discreet and discriminating when sharing.  especially about your woes about other people. go ahead and share the fun times, the good things. the not-so-good should be kept private.  i should remind myself. all the time.

DON'T GET FIRED BECAUSE OF FACEBOOK

Yes, You Should Be Fired For That Facebook Post. (No Matter What the Feds Say Next Week)
By Suzanne Lucas | January 21, 2011

Facebook is a tool used by teenagers to torment each other and for adults to complain about their bosses, right?   Except that your rude commment about your boss or your coworker, or your inapproriate comments about stupid stuff you did could land you on the curb.

Right now the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is preparing to hear a case where an employee was fired after criticizing her boss on Facebook.  (Jon Hyman has a round up of information on this union firing.) But, the NLRB deals largely (although not exclusively) with union employees, who are definitely not “at will” employees, but are under contract.

I still think you should be careful.

I hear the screeching about free speech right now.  Well, yes, you have the right to free speech, but I also believe that companies should have the right to terminate people who use that speech to denigrate the company.  Free speech, not free from consequences speech.  (And remember, it’s only government suppression of speech that is illegal.) Most employees in the United States are at will employees, which means that there is no contract of employment and either party can end it for any or no reason, as long as the reason isn’t an illegal one.  For instance, you can’t fire an employee because she’s pregnant, but you can fire a pregnant employee, as long as the pregnancy isn’t the reason.

So, why am I in favor of companies being able to terminate an employee for online behavior?  (These things, of course, aren’t limited to Facebook.  Myspace, Twitter, and blogs are all good candidates for firing).  Here are 3 Reasons.

   1. Easy firing=easy hiring. I want companies to hire people.  In fact, my fondest wish is that all my readers who are searching for jobs find one this year.  The more restrictions government places on terminating employees, the more hesitant companies are to hire new people.

   2. Bad judgment isn’t limited to online behavior. Companies need employees they can trust to make good decisions.  If you lack the critical thinking skills to say, “Hmmm, if I post that my boss is a jerk, my boss just might find out about it,” then you probably lack the critical thinking skills to do your job.  Yes, people vent.  But the internet is not private.  And anyone who thinks they can trust all their 476 friends to keep something quiet isn’t someone I want on my staff.

   3. Companies should be able to presume loyalty. I know, I know, your company doesn’t care much about your career and they have no problem firing you, so why should you care about them?  Because they pay you to care about them.  In a pre-internet case where Delta airline employee was fired over a letter to the editor, “[t]he court in that case held that there ‘”is an implied duty of loyalty, with regard to public communications, that employees owe to their employers.’ Stating that Mr. Marsh violated this implied duty of loyalty by publicly disparaging Delta, the court found that his termination was just.”  We forbid employees from giving information to the competitor, which would damage the company, so why not forbid employees from posting information that would hurt the company?  The exception to this is when the company is engaging in illegal activity.  Then employees should speak out and should be afforded whistleblower protection.

However, I also think that bosses should stay off their employees’ and candidates’ Facebook pages.  Why?  Because it opens up whole cans of fire-breathing worms.  And, once those cans are open, the worms have no interest in going back in.  Here’s why:

   1. There are things you don’t want to know. Honestly and truly, there are things out there about your employees that you don’t want to know.  Even though you can legally fire people easily, few companies allow you to actually do that.  And there are lots of unemployed lawyers who would be happy to take your employee’s case.

   2. Some information cannot be considered. Yes, you know the gender, age, race, national origin and, frequently, religion and sexual orientation of your employees.  But, you can’t make decisions based on this information, so don’t browse Facebook looking for it.  Wonder if Jim is gay?  What about that candidate?  She looked Jewish.  Hmmmm.  Seriously, even though you wouldn’t make a decision based on protected class information, doesn’t mean you won’t have to defend against it.  If you don’t know, your defense is much easier.

   3. Your employees are not your friends. I know, you’re a great boss and everyone loves you, but remember they love you because you are paying them.  Please keep those worlds separate.  Don’t try to “friend” your employees on Facebook, and don’t follow their personal blogs.  (If they write career based ones, that’s a different story.)  The Evil HR Lady Rule of Work Relationships is that when you are with people from the office you are at the office.  Please don’t turn Facebook into the office.  (And for heaven’s sake, don’t friend one or two members of your staff, but not the rest.  Gah.)

   4. One bad statement or questionable picture does not mean a person is a bad employee. We all make mistakes and things can be taken out of context as well.  You cannot control it if your “friends” post pictures of you from 10 years ago.  Don’t punish your 30 year old employees for something they did at 18.

Right now, I think both employees and employers should use caution when approaching social media at work.  Companies need policies.  And everyone should stop acting like they are in Junior High.  It was bad enough the first time.

MY THOUGHTS

of course a boss and her staff can be friends. they just need to draw clear lines between professional and personal.  it can be tricky. but not impossible. as for FB, i think any attack on any person should not be made public. and yes, i'm all for firing someone who would say something bad about the company.  that's normally in the rules of conduct.

3 Most Annoying Facebook Habits

3 Most Annoying Facebook Habits that Bug Your Friends

By Kathy Kristof
Sep 23, 2010

Facebook friends, honest, I really like you. But, no. I won’t milk your cow or join Mafia Wars so you can take over the south side of Insanityville, where you’ve suddenly gone to live.

And in my household, if you throw food at me, somebody’s going to smack your hand.

Before you “de-friend” me (and when did “friend” become a verb?), I’d like to say that I love your family photos; the class reunion updates; and the funny stories about your kids. I even like to know what you’re doing at work and when you’ve made a really fabulous meal — or deal.

But this new technology gives us the ability to engage in the electronic equivalent of eating with our mouths open or talking through a movie. Sometimes these bad habits can even hit your friends in the pocketbook, which is not a nice thing to do.

We’d never do these things in real life because we’d know they were impolite, annoying and hurtful. But perhaps because so many of us are new to social cyberspace, we’re not as aware of how we’re bugging our Facebook friends.

Here, according to my informal survey, are the 3 most annoying (and costly) things we do on Facebook and how we can handle them differently.

Farmville: Some 60 million of you are building cute little farms in cyberspace and swapping animated livestock. In fact, so many of you are spending real money to buy and build pretend barns and corn fields that Facebook has created it’s own currency. And Farmville is just one of more than a dozen games that people spend hours playing on Facebook. What makes the games so popular? According to both Time Magazine and the web-site Cracked, Farmville manipulates you into playing.

To be sure, no one should tell you that you can’t spend your hard-earned cash to buy pretend machine guns to protect your pixelated turf in Mafia Wars. But the constant updates generated so many complaints that Facebook just announced changes that will restrict the number of posts sent to non-gamers.

Still, the games encourage players to manipulate their friends into playing with pleas like: “My cow is lost! Please help me find her!” Or “Help me build my barn/plant my crops/fix my tractor!” Seriously, you asked for less help when your mother was in the hospital.

It makes us feel guilty to ignore you. After all we love you, but we’re working and Bessy, the lost cow, is not real. If you promise to stop asking us for help on a farm that exists only in cyberspace, we promise to help when you need us in real life. In the meantime, please stop sending us goats.

Chronic “like”rs: Some people seem to “like” everything and need affirmation that you do too. First you get the message: “Suzie likes rainbows and wants you to like them too!” And you think…Uhm…Okay. Seems silly, but who doesn’t like rainbows? Click.

Barely a second goes by before Suzie is liking unicorns and walks on the beach and sailboats and dolphins. She wants you to click the “like” button too! Right about now my thoughts turn sinister:“I am not a Care Bear.”

What’s this whole “like” thing about anyway? Marketing, according to Justin Brookman, senior fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. He says the current “like” button is the latest iteration of “fan” pages, which are aimed at selling everything from books to blogs.

When you click on “like,” your profile information suddenly changes to add unicorns and rainbows and Mama Di’s Restaurant and Target and Black & Decker skill saws. Pretty soon, your Facebook account becomes a fast-clicking billboard for a panoply of products, drawing advertisers to you like flies.

Worse, says Brookman, is that malicious programmers know how easily we’re all affected by habit and peer pressure. So they create buttons that say: “click like to see something cool.” If you get that message from a friend, you’re likely to click on the “cool” thing your friend recommended and find out that it just hacked into your system and installed worms and malware that are not cool at all. One of these worms, by the way, is going to send an identical message to all of your friends, so you can infect them too.

Like as many things as you like in the real world, but use Facebook’s “like” button sparingly.

Impolitic Tagging: You went to a party, had a few too many drinks and ended up napping under the table, drooling into the host’s Labrador. Naturally, somebody snapped a cellphone picture and posted it on Facebook.

The photo is funny. Your friends want to see it. Posting an embarrassing photo of a friend is not the crime. The crime is “tagging” the photo so that your friend’s employer, or prospective employer, can easily find it too.

Jodi Schneider, a veteran recruiter and trainer who writes the blog DCWorks, tells all job applicants to “scrub” their Facebook profiles before sending out resumes. But one of the most pernicious problems for young applicants are friends, who never think twice before tagging an impolitic photo.

For those who don’t know, “tagging” just means that you’ve labeled a photo with a person’s name. Once labeled, that photo is going to show up on the “tagged” person’s Facebook account, whether they put it there or not.

That could keep your buddy from getting work, said Schneider. So post all the photos you want, but use some discretion about identifying a friend acting badly.

MY THOUGHTS

i don't mind the "invites". you can always ignore them. and the "likes". but the "tags"!!! i don't dislike them. i think people mean well. it's just unsettling to find your "unwanted" pic over the net. i'd like to choose the pics i post. thank you.

something you should know about the facebook "like" button

Facebook Turns "Like" Button Into Two-Way Street, Challenging Amazon for Buyer Data

By Chris Dannen
Jul 26, 2010

Facebook has just announced that it will allow publishers to contact users who have “liked” a page by inserting things into that user’s News Feed. The new feature may annoy users, and that may be the idea. By providing an incentive to use their “likes” wisely, Facebook will help turn the Like button — once a relatively blunt instrument — into a much more refined tool.

The Like button has a very specific purpose, but until now, it wasn’t very good at its job. Like Amazon’s (AMZN) huge catalog of past purchases, or Mint’s (INTU) new “saving” features, Facebook’s Like button is an experiment in purchase data: it’s meant to figure out what you, the user, would like to buy. But unlike Amazon’s data, which is based on actual things you bought, or Mint’s system, which asks you what you’d like to save up for, the data Facebook’s Like button collected was susceptible to all kinds of inaccuracies.

As Ad Age wrote in May:

[The Like button] is tough to choke down even for a data junkie at his weakest. If you show me a cheeseburger and ask me if I “like” it, at any given time of day, you are likely to get a different answer each time. Even when I like something, I may not feel compelled to click “like” unless, of course, there was some benefit to me.

As I argued at the time that the Like button would be susceptible to false “likes,” clicked out of boredom, or out of profligacy, or simply because someone set up an SEO-style system that encouraged people to “like” something for some kind of reward.

But making the Like button into a two-way street means that there are consequences to hitting every Like button in sight. It will turn the News Feed into a kind of inbox where publishers whose stuff you’ve liked can now try to push more of their wares in front of your eyeballs. (If you “liked” a product on the Sears (SHLD) site, for example, Sears could stick ads for more products into your Facebook News Feed.)

This disincentive may help insulate against illegitimate likes. But Facebook isn’t stopping there: it’s also providing tools to help add qualitative information to the button. The company has also built out the ability for the Like button to take comments and publish them in friends’ News Feeds, and has also improved analytics on the button. As the Facebook developer site says:

Now, when a user adds a comment to the iFrame version of the Like button, a larger, more prominent story will be shared with the user’s friends. In the past, we’ve seen comments result in increased distribution and referral traffic.

Even with these refinements, we’ve only begun to see the potential of the Like button.

MY THOUGHTS

well, this is something i don't like. the newsfeed gets crowded enough i have learned to use "hide". the "like" button can be good - if we use it wisely, just like everything else.

does social networking impact work

Does Social Networking Impact Work? Survey Reports


Social media sites are becoming some of the most heavily trafficked sites on the internet, including in the workplace, according to a recent poll. The survey, conducted by Right Management, gathered data from over 1,000 respondents concerning employee use of social networking sites during work hours.

While about half of the organizations reported blocking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, others have decided to use the social networking sites as a business tool. Organizations are using the sites to reach out to clients, potential customers, employees, and job seekers.

Overall, 18 percent of respondents reported that social networking on the job often interferes with productivity, while 41 percent said that it sometimes does.

The survey also found some interesting statistics comparing the following criteria:

•Company Size: 51% of workers at an organization with 10,000 or more employees responded that it seldom interferes, compared to 41% at smaller organizations.

•Department: 62% of IT professionals said it seldom interferes, compared to 30% of sales professionals who reported that it often interferes.

•Age: 47% of workers aged 35-44 said that it seldom interferes, compared to 35% of those 18-24.

Organizations need to keep up with the growing presence of social media sites. A recent poll by Manpower suggested that as many as 75 percent of employers do not have a formal policy concerning the use of social networking sites. There are social media policies available on HR.BLR.com (subscription or trial-membership required):

MY THOUGHTS

better include this in the policy manual. it can really affect productivity. i think i won't mind when people can still come-up with excellent work even if social networking sites are not barred. but that's rare. i'm pretty sure, excellent professionals won't have time to use facebook at work. they will be too busy producing results.