2 Tips to Prevent Employees From Harassment on Employer's Social Media Accounts
Social media has become incredibly important to businesses and its importance continues to grow. It allows a business or organization to communicate with the public in basically two communication models. In the first model, the business or organization directs communication as a one-way message board to post information about services and products to inform the public.
The second communication model involves two-way communication in which the business or organization also engages in a consultative process whereby they receive feedback from the public. This allows the business or organization to hear what the public has to say about services and products including receiving complaints about the same. The business or organization can then provide further information, de-escalate the situation, and strengthen its relationships with its customers and potential customers.
As with everything in life, potential benefits come with potential costs. One of the potential costs of a two-way communciation model for social media is that feedback on employee conduct becomes public. Moreover, as anyone who has spent any time on sites like Twitter realizes, the feedback may also be profane, vulgar and threatening. This raises the issue of what, if anything, an employer is obligated to do to protect employees from this type of harassment.
A recent Ontario Arbitration case, Toronto Transit Commission and ATU Local 113, looks at precisely this situation, The business in question operated a number of social media accounts including a Twitter account named TTChelps. The purpose of the account was to provide service updates, obtain customer feedback and generally communicate with TTC customers. The Union grieved how the account was being used.
Among the tweets which advised of service outages, compliments and general information, were ones posted by very unhappy customers. Some of these tweets included offensive language, racsist language, homophobic language. Other tweets included photographs taken on cell phones purportedly showing TTC employees engaged in misconduct.
As a general policy, TTC staff would respond to the posting by providing information as to how to make a formal complaint, which according to the bargain negotiated with the Union had to be in writing, signed by the complainant and providing full particulars of the complainant. Often staff responding to the offensive or complaining tweets would start by a general apology such as "sorry about the experience, if you want to make a formal complaint..."
The Union took the position that the general apology validated the complaint and deprived the employee of having the opporunity to speak to the situation before the complaint was deemed legitimate. The Union also complained that offensive tweets including vulgarity and threats were not removed. Additionally, pictures of employees that were posted were asserted to be a breach of privacy.
The arbitrator agreed with the Union's position. It pointed out that employee discipline was a private matter and not a public one. As such, the complaints process was to be kept private once intial feedback was recieved. The business was to advise the tweeter that offensive language was not allowed and to ask them to remove the post failing which the tweeter would be blocked. Concurrently, the tweeter could be advised of the formal complaint process. Similarly, any one posting a photo was asked to remove it failing which the tweeter would be blocked. This request was also concurrent to advising how to file a formal complaint. Threats were not to be tolerated at all and requests to remove immediately or be blocked were to be given.
By making a few small changes such as not apologizing for situations until after an investigation was conducted, the employee received the intial benefit of the doubt.
Employees were further protected from inappropriate, offensive or threatening comments.
The Lesson: While it is crucial to a business or organization to obtain customer feedback, it is also important to protect employees from harassing and threatening behaviour. By adopting a process which encourages the feedback while transfering complaints to a private process and insisting on non-offensive/threatening tweets employees are protected and valuable customer relationships are maintained.
Toronto Transit Commission and ATU Local 113, 2016 CarswellOnt 10550
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