Social Media Policies for School Employees

1. Presented by : Vanessa Landesfeind, Ed.D. & Stephen R. D. Glass, Ho.T. Social Media Policies for School Employees

2. Social Media Use Statistics • Each month more than 3 billion photos and 180 billion posts are uploaded to Facebook. • The average Facebook user has 130 friends. • More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month. • People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page). • People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. • If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest population.

3. Social Media Use Statistics • Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day. • There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services. • Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service. • Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.

4. Social Media Use Statistics • LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003. • There are more than 70 million users worldwide.80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. • A new member joins LinkedIn every second. • LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day. • Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.

5. What is Social Media? • For the purposes of this presentation we consider social media to be is any form of online publication or presence that allows end users to engage in multi-directional conversations in or around the content on the website. (Onlinematters.com) • Common examples are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, wikis, YouTube, and photo sharing sites.

6. Scenarios for Discussion Or….the stories are true but the profiles have been changed to protect our “friends”. Question: How do you think this incident should be handled?

7. Issues Related to Social Media • Traditional boundaries between staff and students can be blurred. • Employee rights to privacy needs to be clearly defined • Employee issues such as harassment have a new forum • Employees as representatives of the school brand • Security of information

8. Disclaimer • Social media is continuously evolving and case law regarding social media issues is being created right now. • All information in this presentation is intended as a starting point for further conversation and a sampling of what is happening in private industry and higher education.

9. Social Media Issues We Already Consider in K- 12 Schools

10. Workplace Internet Use Employers have legitimate reasons to monitor internet use including: • To minimize legal exposure • To increase productivity • To avoid information loss

11. Social Media Issues We Should Consider for Employees K – 12 Schools

12. Social Networking and Privacy Outside of Work in CA • There are no laws prohibiting an employer from looking at unrestricted social network content posted by an employee. • California’s constitution protects individuals privacy interests. • California also has lifestyle protection statutes which protect employees’ off-the-job interests.

13. Social Networking and Privacy Outside of Work in Other States • Recent court cases outside of California have established that posts to social networking sites are in part discoverable . • Employers should be cautious in posting comments regarding human resource issues, no matter how seemingly private the network

14. Harassment in a New Setting • Existing workplace sexual harassment policies apply to social networking, during and after work hours. • Supervisors should be particularly cautious with respect to subordinates. • “Friend” requests from a supervisor can be perceived as pressure. • “Unfriending” can also be misinterpreted.

15. Protecting the School Image • Many organizations including higher education institutions have begun leveraging social media to reach new and existing clients • Unofficial posts by organization employees can be damaging • Simply advising employees to “be professional” may not be enough

16. Writing a Social Media Policy See Handout

17. Very Recent Developments • The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against a company in Connecticut. The issue in question is whether a policy preventing employees from making disparaging comments regarding the employer on social networking sites, violates the employees right to engage in union activities. • The case will be heard before an NLRB Administrative Law Judge in January 2011.

18. VS Education Consortium Vanessa Landesfeind Work Spouse: Head of Technology Hometown: The LBC Activities: Not friending on FB and Fonts Interests: Charter school development and TV Stephen Glass Work Spouse: Dr. L Hometown: The OC Activities: Friending everyone on FB Interests: Fantasy Football and Closing the Achievement Gap

19. Please Do Not “Friend” Us • In your off time, visit our website • www.vs-edconsortium.org • …become a Fan on Facebook (VS Education Consortium), • …or follow us on Twitter (EdConsortiumVS). • All of the information you heard today will be posted.

20. References Genova, G.L. (2009). No place to play: Current employee privacy rights in social networking sites. Business Communications Quarterly,March, 97-100. Grensing-Pophal, L. (2010). The new social media guidelines. Information Today, 27(3), 45-47. Hunton & Williams. (2010). Court allows discovery of facebook and myspace content. Hunton Employment & Labor Law Perspectives. Kittay, D. (2010). Will you be my friend? New quandaries for a new age. Bar Leader, 34(5), 16-17.

21. Klein, J.S., Pappas, N.J., Pruzansky, J.E. (2010). When social-networking and the workplace collide. Human Resource Executive Online, June 16, 2010. Raudabaugh, J.N. (2010). Critical developments in labor and employment law. Inside the Beltway.