From a PR perspective, this decision is quite unsettling. Now it will be very difficult to enforce social media guidelines. Employees can now post basically whatever they want online about their company or the people they work with/for without the risk of punishment. A PR professional's job is to create and foster positive relationships with their company's various publics. That job just became much more difficult. The difficulty lies in the task of preparing for and combating the possible negative comments made about the company from unhappy past and present employees. While not all things said on Facebook are protected by law (it depends on where the discussion takes place, the content matter, and whether the comments were provoked by an employers unfair labor practice) there is still great risk in employees making negative remarks that could possible hurt the company's relationships with certain publics.
I would hope that if someone has a serious problem with something going on in the workplace they would turn to someone within the company for assistance rather than bashing the company or person online. But I know that is not realistic. There is no way to make everyone happy at the same time. Since it is going to be much more difficult to enforce social media guidelines, public relations professionals are now going to have to develop a strategy to handle comments made by employees via Facebook and other social media outlets. The ruling of the National Labor Relations Board once again emphasizes that social media is still very new and not all the kinks are worked out. As the rules regarding social media continue to develop and change, so must the ways companies and PR professionals handle the situations that arise from personal and professional social media use.
I agree with Caitlin's ideas over this recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board. The idea that companies are going to have to continue to change their own rules and regulations dealing with social media and their employees as more court hearings and rulings are decided, but also as social media evolves is totally true. I think it is a good thing for us, as college students, to consider our stance on this idea of comments by employees via social media outlets. Knowing where we stand on this controversial topic will allow a clearer vision for us in the future when we are in the work place and dealing with these types of situations. Also, to begin good practice with social media and anything else we are posting online in our daily lives now and these good habits will carry on into the future when it will matter more professionally. Not only considering others but also ourselves, so that we can prevent jeopardizing our future career over something as little as a comment posted on the internet. I think it is a good 'rule of thumb' for everyone to think about what they type before venting about a situation, person, or their company. People need to realize if they have not already that the internet is not a private journal to post feelings, it is very much public. We should take pride in the things we post online.
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