The use of scheduled social media checks within companies has become common practice. In fact, based on data collected by CareerBuilder, 48% of employers check up on current employees on social media.

Despite this, social media background checks and privacy continue to be topics of discussion among employees of companies and leadership alike.

Generally, companies insist on routine social screening for three primary reasons:

  • Company reputation: Ensuring employees are not posting anything that could harm the company’s reputation.
  • Public and workplace safety: Identifying troublesome online behaviour like drug use, violence, hate speech etc. All of which have no place in any work environment.
  • Loss prevention

But is routine social media screening an actual invasion of privacy?

In simple terms, no. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada makes it clear that “employees should be aware that any of the information or communications posted on their social media can potentially be accessed by current or potential employers.” Within certain parameters (namely, the relevance of the search), any company can search an employee’s social media.

A big part of protecting employee privacy is mandating social media checks within your team through a provider that mitigates privacy concerns. Triton social media background checks don’t include a human or personal element. They don’t provide a pass or fail. Rather, they impartially report on the relevant results: the presence of violence, hate speech, discrimination, sexually explicit behaviour, substance abuse, and more.

Best Practices for Scheduled Social Media Checks

1.     Develop and maintain clear policies. Establish company policy for scheduled social media checks that outline guidelines around when and why these checks will occur.
2.     Explain the types of flags these checks will produce and what action to take should they arise.
3.     Clearly outline your anti-discrimination or anti-harassment policies, and what can happen if they’re ignored.
4.     Be consistent with it. Make sure that your social media policy applies to all employees.
5.     Include a discussion about it in your onboarding process as well as a section in your employee handbook. Ideally, your employees sign this handbook, consenting to routine background check screening.
6.     Never ask for passwords and usernames. This IS an invasion of privacy.
7.     Use a third party. Social media checks should only be conducted by impartial third parties, not by an HR employee. This way, the checks are uniform and bias does not come into play. By relying on software to filter through the data, rather than a human being, there is no room for bias and only the things you need to know are reported on.
8.     Reassure employees that anything and everything included in a social media background check will be kept completely confidential.

Ultimately, deciding how to best approach social media background checks within your organization falls to you, HR leadership. You may get pushback, but there are many ways to ensure your people that the process is impartial and confidential. You always want to protect your company’s interests while also respecting the individual rights of your employees.

With social media checks from Triton Canada, you get an in-depth analysis of employees’ social media accounts that are created specifically to flag potentially problematic behaviour. For more information and to find out about our high-volume discounting, please visit www.tritoncanada.ca today.