Social Media Issues in Employment: A Review of Literature

This article reviews the issues faced by employees and organizations due to social media usage. It highlights the ethical dilemmas related to employment legality, low hiring, and mixing of private and work life. The article suggests practical implications for employers, employees, and union members.

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Introduction
Social media has become an integral part of the society, organization and the employees.
The use of social media has increased over the past two decades and therefore, the most effective
use of social media is adopted in the decision making process. This increasing usage has posed
several challenges among the employers and employees and within the organization such as
employment legality and influenced structural and cognitive capital. The organizations of present
day are constantly searching for social media to gather relevant information about potential
employees. It can be found out from the article that the practical experience of organization has
surpassed the empirical studies related to social media evaluation that poses significant influence
on the organization as well as the employees (Roth et al. 2016).
Body
The research was carried out to find out the issues faced by the employees due to social
media and the outcome faced by the organizations and the managers. It was also required to find
out the resolving of the issue by the specific managers and employees of the organization.
In the article ‘social media dilemmas in the employment context’, Helen Lam had aimed
to evaluate the social media issues that results in various ethical dilemmas related to employment
legality, low hiring, mixing pf private and work life, References were drawn from the
development of recent case laws to provide recommendation to the employers and employees.
Review of previous case laws statistical trends, and research papers were effectively used for
outlining the research (Lam 2016). The research outcome has focused that the employers who

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use social media for decision- making process might not know the difference between
interference on the personal privacy and the activities related to employees.
On the other hand, it was found out that, the employees who were reluctant to use social
media might face the impact of low hiring and damages for imperfect employee message posted.
It was concluded at the end of the research that social media acts as the connecting link between
the employees, the messages posted after duty and the privacy portion, which might be
considered as evidence to support the arguments. The practical implications were made on the
part of the employees, employers, the union members and the related ethical and legal
considerations of using social media in the organization. The current developments in the field of
privacy rights, labor relation rights, human rights and contractual rights were considered in the
context of the research. It was suggested that the issue related to power shift needed to be
addressed (Thornthwaite 2017).
Moreover, the increasing use of social media has faded the border between work and the
private lives of the employees. The ability of the employers to supervise the social media
activities of the employees at any time has provided them with the supreme authority. However,
employees can make use of social media as a voice channel to increase their potential power to a
certain extent. This rapidly increasing area along with the emergence of new laws on the context
of employment provided an organized review of the complicated issues regarding the current
developments (Thornthwaite 2016).
The research carried out on this topic has analyzed the facts that the increasing use of
social media influences both the structural capital and cognitive capital. Moreover, the entire
social media and increased social capital helps in the promotion of the organization in terms of

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knowledge management. It leads to an improved level of organizational knowledge quality. This
research has focused on the potential restrictions of social media in the promotion of knowledge
management in the organization. It was concluded from this study that the firms should carefully
manage the integrated use of social media for their own benefit (Bharati, Zhang and Chaudhury
2015). The working of organization, which is supported by advanced communication
technology, gives rise to immediacy, connectivity, and a fading border between work and non-
work area.
The research was carried out among 100 employees to focus on the connection between
regular use of smart phone and the use of work- from- home interference. The two features of
this research were social policies of the employees and their availability after work shift; and
their entire work involvement. The finding of the research were helpful in addressing that the
management should give a clear idea about the use of smart phones in specific time and the
employees cannot be expected to be available throughout the day (Derks et al. 2015).
A number of researches are being conducted to suggest that most of the organizations are
using data from the social media such as Face book for finding potential employees. However,
there is limitation regarding the probable implication of this practice. In this particular research,
the Face book accounts of college students were scanned by the recruiters of different
organizations for evaluation. The study concluded that selection procedure was biased towards
female and white applicants. It was recommended for the organization to be careful regarding the
use of social media data to measure job applicants (Van Iddekinge et al. 2016).
Social media has proved to be a boon as well as a bane in both personal and professional
life of every individual. According to McDonald and Thompson (2016) the tension and anxiety

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regarding the emergence of social media in the organization are evident from the public
expression, media and hearing of the court’s jury members. The hidden cause behind this tension
and anxiety are yet to be discovered. In this particular article, the authors have reviewed the
existing literature on the topic of social media issues in employment to focus on the three
dominant sources. These sources are profiling; criticizing blogs and posts; increasing use of
social media during work hours. In all these three areas, the primary concern related to
employment was identified. It was also sought to explore the mostly used forms of social media
at workplace (Lam 2016).
The contradictory points that emerged from this research were based on the disruption of
social media in the organization by encouraging the employers and employees’ activities to
rearrange the border between public and private arena. As the employers and employees are
using the same technologies therefore the main concern was related to the common point of entry
into these technologies, contrary to the asymmetric conventional demonstration of disparity and
confrontation. It was concluded in the research that a representational brief of the comparative
authority of the social media issues related to employment paved the way for further research in
the organization. McDonald, Thompson and O'Connor (2016) agreed to the points raised by the
previous authors in relation to the increasing use of social media in the organization by
employees and employers. The authors have specifically focused on profiling which involves
collecting online information and making use of that in order to find out about the potential
employees that might fit the criteria of the specific job (Derks et al. 2015).
The study on the legal considerations in workplace was required for an extensive use of
profiling and the professional implications of the HRM practitioners. However, there was hardly
any attention given to the specific area of practice. In this research, profiling was considered as a

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platform on which both the employers and employees show their asymmetrical interest. The data
was collected from a large sample of Australia and UK and the research outcome has displayed
the existence and result of profiling of the employees. Moreover, other significant factors on
which the research was based included the limit to which the employees and employers stressed
on their privacy rights against employer rights to get involved in profiling. Moreover, the limit of
the organization to codify the profiling practices was emphasized on this article along with the
responses of the employees in securing their online data. The research findings contributed to a
mini evidence of addressing the social media behavior at the workplace it was found to be
modifying and restructuring the border between the personal and public arena. Opgenhaffen and
Claeys (2017) had put forward their research to evaluate the workplace policy in association with
the use of social media by the employees and employers. The authors had put emphasis on the
limit to which the employees are permitted to use social media at workplace. Additionally, the
opportunities related to the use of social media by the employees and the implementation of the
social media norms within the organization were outlined in this article. Detailed interviews were
conducted with the HR and communication manager of 16 different companies in Europe, which
were of different size in various sectors. The research findings had highlighted on the difference
in opinion of the firms. While some firms believed that, the use of social media should be
allowed among the employees whereas others went against it. Majority of the participants of the
survey believed that the organizations could be beneficial with the use of social media to spread
and share work related information within their official channel (McDonald, Thompson and
O'Connor 2016).
The use of social media to share and spread the official messages was encouraged instead
of creating their own personal message. The content of this research contradicted the previous

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discussion as it supported the use of social media in the workplace. This article has reflected the
tension regarding displaying of employee messages on the social media with respect to the social
media terms and conditions. However, the limitation of the research paved the way for future
studies regarding the current social media guidelines. In relation to that, the proper and
inappropriate use of social media guidelines in the organizations needs to be scanned among the
managers and the employees. The practical implications were based on the connection of the
organization with the employees regarding the use of social media. The managers of the
organization who took part in this survey seemed to be extra cautious regarding the potential
risks associated with the increasing use of social media. In this way, they tend to forget the
opportunities, which might arrive in the coming days when the employees will play the role of
ambassadors. The detailed interviews in this research permitted the authors to find out the reason
behind the implementation of social media guidelines within organizations and the create
recommendations for the managers (Bharati, Zhang and Chaudhury 2015).
The key purpose of James Richards behind proposing the research paper was to measure
the extent of employee benefit in the trending era of internet and determine the research gap
surrounding the activities. Both literature review and an empirical study were conducted to find
out about the issues of employee engagement with social media. The findings of the research has
elaborated that the internet has continued to provide new opportunities for the employees to
discover about the employment interests. This research paper is evidence that the entire
assessment of the employment activities is not possible without further research (Richards 2011).
The article “You’ve been tagged! (Then again, maybe not): Employers and Facebook”
has referred to the social networking sites to explore about the business and cultural landscape. It
was mentioned in the paper that the firms could use social media to share organizational

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information with the interested individuals and collect information about the potential employees
of the organization. It is an interesting fact on the part f the employer to find out about an
individual from their Face book page. It can be understood that the employers would like to
research about the candidate that they want to hire. However, the policies of Face book do not
entertain the method of selecting candidates based on the online information and it might end up
in legal challenges (Smith and Kidder 2010).
Louise Thornthwaite has mentioned in his article about the increasing dependence of the
employers on social media with particular challenges of privacy, discipline and monitoring
(Thornthwaite 2016). The focus was on the incorporation of social media policies for regulating
the employees’ online behavior. However, he has pointed out in another article that there are
various tribunals regarding the adjustment of unfair means of using social media at work. The
implication of the border between the personal and private life of the employees requires a
constant analysis regarding their use of social media platforms (Thornthwaite 2017). The
modifications in the information and communication technology are affecting the development
of human resource management. It was argued in this paper that in many organizations, new
scanning technologies were used to increasing the employer power, which might degrade the
profession of HRM (Van Gramberg, Teicher and O'Rourke 2014).
Conclusion
It can be concluded that there were different views among the managers and employees
of various organizations regarding the use of social media at the workplace. The arguments of
the researchers were put forward to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the
organizational function based on the social media use of employees and employers.

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References
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the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge
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Lam, H., 2016. Social media dilemmas in the employment context. Employee Relations, 38(3),
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McDonald, P. and Thompson, P., 2016. Social media (tion) and the reshaping of public/private
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