If you want to be friends with colleagues, not with your boss, you should consider: What happens to the friendship if the colleague is suddenly promoted? “Then the question arises as to whether you should remove the new boss from your friendship list, because as a boss you simply shouldn’t know certain things about your employees,” says Wedde. Many employees have posted comments on Facebook like “Annoyed by the office” or photos of lavish parties, says Wedde. “But none of this concerns the boss – especially since it can also have legal consequences.”
What companies can do
To ensure that such communication situations do not arise in the first place, Wedde recommends that companies set guidelines for dealing with Facebook, X and Co. What advice it should contain for superiors is clear to the labor lawyer: “Don’t make friends with employees who report to you on social networks like Facebook,” says Wedde.
Even commercial networks such as Xing or Linkedin can become sensitive under labor law. “This can become relevant if you are looking for a new job through such networks,” says Wedde. If you write on your profile that you are looking for new challenges, you will quickly be fired.
“A manifest desire to emigrate can be a reason for separation in certain activities – the employee then no longer enjoys the trust of the company and this can result in termination,” says Wedde. And adds: “Something like this doesn’t stay secret, someone knows someone and that’s how it ultimately gets through to the boss,” says Wedde. “It’s high risk to look for a new job in a connected community,” he says. The labor lawyer advises you to look for a job under a pseudonym – or to leave it alone and apply analogously.
Uncertainty about social media issues is apparently widespread in companies due to a lack of guidelines. For example, some companies pay an employee for a Linkedin account because they want them to use it for work. But what happens if the colleague leaves the company? Who owns the contacts and can the company force the employee to delete the account? “There is no legal recourse for this if the employee runs the account under his or her own name,” says Wedde.
No company can demand that the employee give up the account – after all, private contacts could also be found there. Wedde therefore advises companies to mark official accounts as such, for example with “Siemens employee” Müller or something similar. “But I don’t know of any company where it’s regulated like that,” adds Wedde.
