Germany to restrict employers from Facebook – a good move for employees?

The German government has controversially proposed to make it illegal for employers to use personal social networks such as Facebook as part of their recruitment process (see last week’s New York Times article). Potential employers will still be able to google an individual or to access more business related sites like LinkedIn and Xing.

If we willingly post our photos and updates onto the web do we have any rights if potential employers scan our pages and make judgments about whether or not we will make suitable employees? More and more potential employers and recruitment agencies are using social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to advertise posts and review candidates, leading to the privacy debate.

There have been examples of teachers having privacy problems with their students on Facebook but if the privacy settings work then does it need to be monitored and controlled by the government? On the other hand, are some Facebook users too inexperienced to understand the long-term implications of their actions?

At the moment, it’s entirely in the recruiter’s hands whether they let a potential employee’s online activity influence their decision. Under this new law job-seekers would have the right to legal action if they discovered they had lost out on a position due to the employer basing their decision on information from Facebook.

It can really be quite shocking what people are willing to share on Facebook (for example see this blog post with examples of inappropriate work-related updates or check out Lamebook - a website where people share inappropriate updates they’ve seen on Facebook - a quick browse always makes a funny few minutes!). Facebook’s privacy settings are also notoriously fiddly, and are automatically set to share most of your information to anyone online.

At first glance it seems that anything that protects people’s freedom can only be a good idea – this move by the German government is part of an overall move to protect privacy and empower employees (the proposed law also seeks to ban employers from secretly filming employees).

Law or no law, savviness about online activity is crucial

By disallowing information from an individual’s online activity to affect a recruitment decision, employers would be unable to be influenced if someone is not on Facebook either. This is potentially problematic in job roles where a self-conscious and effective online presence is important e.g. marketing. Moreover, I think that a presence on social networks can play an invaluable role for job-seekers; this shouldn’t be seen as something to fear, rather just something to be savvy about.

Recruiters and HR personnel surely can’t be blamed for an individual’s own slackness with their online privacy. In the same vein, can the law really be responsible for protecting people from themselves?! Regardless of whether this law is passed, the bottom line is that it would be near impossible to enforce (especially as employers may inadvertently see Facebook results and page previews in Google searches). With the growth of social network use there’s really no excuse for ignorance when it comes to online activity. In my opinion, the responsiblity lies in the individual’s hands.

Our latest LCP newsletter discussed the many ways that HR professionals could be making use of Social Media, just send an email to LCP if you’d like a copy.

Image credit: Flickr

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