Page 9 - Moore Blatch Business Magazine edition 2

EMPLOYMENT

TWEETERING ON

THE WRONG SIDE

OF THE LAW

HOW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

COULD LAND YOU IN COURT

DISCRIMINA TION

The risk: Sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook provide a
huge opportunity for recruiters to find out more about the people
they are considering hiring. While it’s safe for a company to deny
someone a job because the candidate’s Facebook is full of status
updates that are clearly unprofessional, there are other pieces of
information that can be gleaned from social media that can’t be used
when deciding whether to offer someone a job. This includes their
age, sex, marital status or if they have a disability or are pregnant.
K A THERINE MAXWELL
The solution: Put simply, do not allow these factors to be drawn
into recruitment decision making. While it’s difficult to prove that P artner, head of employment
a company has checked a person out on social media and shelved
them because of their sex, age or status; emails between staff 023 8071 8094
raising and commenting on these points as a negative can be used katherine.maxwell@mooreblatch.com
as evidence by a disgruntled candidate.

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