This is a commonly posed question: What are the consequences for an employee posting something negative about their employer on a social networking site like My Space, Facebook, or Twitter?

This is how I respond:

Monitor and Catch the Positive

What do you do if you catch employees posting something positive on Twitter or Facebook about being a paramedic, their co-workers, their patients, or their employer? I work with a lot of paramedics that like their job and are very proud of being an EMS professional. Their pride is infectious. They share it with co-workers, patients, other emergency responders, nurses, and physicians. They talk about the challenges and rewards of the job freely and without consequence.

You likely have some feedback mechanisms in place to listen to your employees that are saying good things about their employer. Your medical director or a triage nurse might mention it during a committee meeting. An on-coming crew might say something like “that last crew sure does a great job cleaning the rig at the end of their shift.” Before looking and listening for the negative conversations make sure you are hearing, encouraging, and applauding the positive employee use of social media.

Most conversations about employee use of social networks, social media content sites, and the web generally imply that employee use is negative and nefarious. From my anecdotal observation most of my co-workers spend their at work down time pursuing their own interests – playing games, learning more about a favorite hobby, or – gasp – working on becoming a better EMS professional. It is my suspicion that most social networking use on or off duty ignores or is simply indifferent to work. If you are skeptical start monitoring and measuring what and why employees are saying on social networks. On Facebook the ration of Farmville posting to work related posting is probably 99 to 1 based on my informal observation.

Working Hard or Hardly Working

Complaining about work is as old as work itself. Have you previously had rules or consequences for saying something negative about work or a co-worker while in a bar, bowling alley, or grocery store? People openly, with or without social networks, complain about work and all things work related on and off duty. I have endured hours listening to complaining workers. How I wish I could simply remove their rants from my Facebook news feed instead of being trapped to listen in the front of the ambulance.

Creating a policy means training on the policy and then enforcement of the policy. Training and monitoring the actual work of paramedics (driving, assessing patients, treating patients, writing documentation) is a pretty substantial task. Are you sure you want to add Facebook and Twitter monitoring?

Social Media Policy

A policy should cover the do’s and don’ts of social networking use with concrete examples that, at best, lead to positive and professional use and, at worst, lead to neutral indifference. David and I have recorded these poscasts about social media policies:

1. Create and Click Responsibly
2. Social Media Policies Interview with HR Professional Roberta Jackson

We also have an ebook on crafting a social media policy.

About the author

Greg Friese wrote 58 articles on this blog.

Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is an author, podcaster, blogger, and advocate for emergency response agencies to use social media before, during, and after any incident. Greg is the Director of Education for CentreLearn Solutions, LLC. He is also the co-host of the EMSEduCast podcast and is a paramedic for a 911 agency in northeast Wisconsin

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