**Disclaimer: The following is not intent to provide legal advice. If you have any questions about labor law, you would need to contact either a government agency or a labor law attorney.

A lot of the state and federal agencies have started to seriously address what an employer can use or not when making employment decisions for their existing staff or prospective employees. The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) and the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) have passed several legislatures which still have lots of gray areas. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s main mission is to protect the employees from illegal or unfair practices. Most legislatures are putting more restrictions on the employers and what they can do or cannot do. For instance, an employer is not allowed to access private social media accounts owned by their employees. If an employee refuses to give the access to their private online accounts, the employer cannot retaliate without cause for legal issues.

Other legislatures focus on giving protection to the employers. Under very specific and unique circumstances, an employer may have the right to access employee’s social media sites. Again this is where there are lots of gray areas and we recommend the legal counsel of a labor law attorney. For example, if an employer is investigating acts of misconduct, he may have the right to do so. A good example maybe if an employee is under suspicion of sharing proprietary or confidential on their social media account.

Some states like California have state specific laws in addition to federal laws.
There are three areas of focus: Before offering a job to a prospective employee, during their employment with your company and during or after separation of employment.

=1= During the hiring process, an employer is allowed to use social media to identify prospective employees for opened jobs in their company but cannot misuse the information from the social media platforms in a discriminatory manner. A good example would be if one employer was to discriminate based on sex, age, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability or other reason.

=2= During employment, an employer cannot force an employee to reveal access to their private social accounts.

=3= During the separation process, an employer is allowed to use social media to identify prospective employees for opened jobs in their company but cannot misuse the information from the social media platforms in a discriminatory manner. A good example would be if one employer was to discriminate based on sex, age, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability or other reason.

As any other legal matters companies should proceed careful when accessing employees or candidates’ personal social media account to make any decision about their employment. We recommend that businesses (regardless of their size) should have social media company policies that are reviewed by a lawyer and clearly define the expectations of the company.

The Internet and especially social media are moving at such a fast pace that it is difficult to keep up if you own or manage a company. Do not ignore it, be informed and do what is right and legal by the laws and you will be just fine.