Freedom of Speech and Its Potential Impact on Your Reputation (& Your Employer) When on Social Media

Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, uh, June 17th, 2020 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. Eric Cook here from WSI Digital, and I am really excited, although I can't see her, I know she's there because we've been talking, to bring one of my good friends on today's show as a special guest.

Hello. Deborah Gonzalez.

Hi, Deborah Gonzalez. Who is a social media and entertainment law attorney to talk a little bit about some of the interesting little prickly parts of social media that I've come across over the last few days, given everything that's going on in the world and some of the sensitive topics that people are discussing on social media. Before I officially relinquish the microphone though, I want to just remind everybody, first and foremost, those of you that are attending live, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We're really excited that you're here. And if you've got a comment or a question or an observation, I suspect there'll be a lot of comments and questions during today's show. Feel free to use the chat function in your control panel, and I'll be keeping an eye on those, and we'll pose them to Deborah, and we'll just have some dialogue today. Today's show and all shows are recorded and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com, which is the screen that you're seeing up in front of you right now. So after today's show is over, you'll find the recording for today's show there. And, yeah, lots to talk about. And we don't have a formal presentation. There's no slides. But Let me kind of give you the nuts and bolts of what we're going to talk about today. Well, I guess before I do that, let me formally say hello to Debra and let you at least get a word in edgewise. So, Debra, thanks for being a guest, a repeat guest. You've been on the show a number of times, but thanks for coming back to Free Webinar Wednesdays.

Well, thank you so much, Eric. It's always good, you know, to be here with you and your guests. And I'm so sorry that the webcam is not working. Don't know what's going on, but you know, I always say, if you're gonna do a show about technology, that's when it's not gonna work, right?

Oh, of course. Absolutely. Well, we've got your picture with lots of books behind you. I mean, I already know you're smart, but now you've got lots of books behind you. I'm sure you read every one of them. So that just further reinforces it. So let me just paint a little bit of a picture about why I asked you to be on the show. I know the title talks a little bit about freedom of speech, and then I'll pass it over to you. You can provide a little bit more of your background and kind of why and how we came to know one another for some perspective. And then really, I want to spend the rest of the show just kind of speaking in hypothetical, big picture. This is not legal advice, and I'm sure you'll say that again when you get an opportunity to do that, because we don't want this to, you know, put anybody in a position where they think they're getting legal advice. But over the last week or so, I've had certain situations brought to my attention on social media where individuals have gone out on Facebook or on Twitter, but primarily on Facebook, and And they posted something that has been perceived or in reality has been seen as controversial, racist, insensitive. And in the world of social media, particularly we work with a lot of community banks, doesn't matter if you don't have your employer's name directly associated with your profile or it might not even be mentioned. People are going to figure out where you work, and what's happening is when somebody comes across that, the network jumps on top of it. You are quickly called out, and that is brought to your employer's attention. And I mean, even Starbucks had a recent situation where they sent an email out discouraging or forbidding employees from wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, and that email got leaked to the social media world, and next thing you know. Starbucks is in the middle of a controversy because people are talking about what should people be able to say and not say and do and not do. So it's a little bit of a lightning rod, and I'm not here to say what's right or wrong or to, you know, try to convince anybody. I just want to have some dialogue around, as employers, what should you be maybe thinking about as it relates to your staff, and as employees, Thinking about how that could impact your, your job, your individual brand, your friends and your connections, because social media is just gonna amplify that and put a microscope right over the top of it. So that's really where we're at and what I want to talk about. And I suspect you can probably hear that lawnmower in the background, so the joys of a live show. I'm gonna step away from the camera for a quick second and close my window while Deborah maybe gives a little bit more background around how we know each other and some of her expertise in this area. So, Debra, over to you.

Yeah, and I'm going to do that very briefly so that I can get to some of what you brought up, which I suspect that our guests are much more interested in doing than finding out my background. But I created a— or started a company called Law2SM back in 2011, and working on a specific model called the socially legal audit. And that's how Eric and I sort of got involved. This idea that with social media taking a much more mainstream approach with businesses, making sure that they could be legally, socially viable, right? And not go against any of the laws, whether federal or state, as they're doing this work on social media. And I do want to point out that one of the things that really stuck out to people about the Starbucks incident was that they were celebrating Pride Month, and so they had been very vocal in that their employees can talk about Pride Month, can wear the buttons, can you know there were things in the store about Pride Month. But then this memo comes out that they could not do that with Black Lives Matter, and I think you know having said one thing and then here's this memo in the background really brought up a hit to the reputation as almost being hypocritical. And that's where I think it really took off on social media, was that, well, if you were celebrating this, why not celebrate that? And, you know, the two are obviously controversial to many businesses right now, but it also brings up what can a business do or what should a business do? Because I always say, you know, the law is sort of the floor of what is the minimum that you can do, right? And we're, where the law may protect you in that. But then there's a moral or an ethical code that sort of goes above that. So even though there might be things that legally we can do, a business might question whether they should do it or not. And I think there's a lot of concern right now of businesses and brands sort of being on the bandwagon of Black Lives Matter or History Month and really commercializing it to a point that it's now turning off people. Right? So we've gone from the beginning, we're seeing, you know, a brand or a company do a certain ad or recognizing Black Lives Matter, to now it just seems everybody is doing it. And do they really mean what they're saying, or is it just another advertising ploy? Okay, so I think we're in that sort of scenario in context of whether this has been so overdone that it's just not coming across the same sincere anymore. And you know, Eric, that when it comes to marketing, you have to be authentic. You have to be sincere or your customers are just not gonna believe you and it'll turn them off and they just won't then go and buy your product because there's so many different alternatives that we have, right? The other thing that's happened, and you've pointed this out, is because there's so much on social media, it's very easy for your customers to get information about your businesses. And that includes Your employees, many times employees will put on their LinkedIn page that they work for your company. Or on their Facebook page as part of their bio or even their Twitter profile, they might put some of that information. And so there's many different ways for people to find information of who's working for your company and then extrapolating from whatever that person puts on social media and associating it with your company, even if you don't agree with what was posted, but just sort of this affiliation, right? If it's your employee, well, that's the kind of employee that you're hiring. Then, you know, we don't agree with what that employee said, therefore we are now going to boycott your company. And so that's sort of like the psychological process of what is happening when these posts get on. But, you know, you did name this, that there's some freedom of speech, right, that employees have even when they work for a company. And many of these posts that we're seeing are not put on official business social platforms, because if it were, then that's, that's pretty straightforward that you can then fire that person, right? Because the idea is that they are in a position representing the company and officially putting out statements of the company, right? So you can see that that's very different from just your regular rank-and-file employee who has a personal Facebook post. You know, people still have the right to their opinion. We might not agree with what their opinion is, but they still have a right to put it. And so when we see these kinds of situations, my first question is, Does the business have a social media policy? Okay, so that's usually where we start when we see these kind of questions of, we have this employee, he made this post, it is not, it does not make the company look good, right? But that's not that employee's job, is it, to make the company look good? That's your marketing department, that's your official spokesperson job. Do you have a code of conduct that sort of guides what your employees should be doing or the way that they should be holding themselves, right, when they're on the job? It's more iffy trying to control activities of an employee off the job. So for example, in banks, I don't think there would be any bank code that would allow a mohawk. in the bank, that sort of haircut down the middle, not because it might not look great on the person. There are some people who it absolutely looks fantastic, but from a customer standpoint, seeing somebody with a mohawk would raise confidence issues, right? They would not be as confident or trusting giving their money. And so most banks have this sort of dress code of being very professional with your hair, with your clothing, with your shoes. You know, I worked in a CPA firm in New York and they had a dress code where women had to wear stockings, right? Pantyhose, even in the dead of summer, you had to wear pantyhose. There was this vision that they had of how you needed to interact with the customers. Okay. Times have changed, right? We've had different cases go up about how people can wear their hair. The most recent case, which dealt with dreadlocks, actually the individual lost that case and the business— it was upheld that the business had a legitimate business reason for requesting that he not have dreadlocks during that time. So we have to view all of that we're seeing happen right now within the context of what the courts have decided. So we start with, do you have—

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I was going to go back to one of the comments that you made, and I jotted down is a comment made on an official company resource, like their Facebook page or their Twitter account. At what point— and I suspect that the, the line is pretty fuzzy here— but at what point does someone's position within an organization imply that they would be an official spokesperson or representative, like the CEO going on their own personal Facebook page or profile and saying something? Is it more likely that that would be construed that that is actually representative of the organization that he or she leads? Or does that really not play any sort of a bearing in what role someone has within an organization and whether that impacts their ability to be perceived as an official spokesperson?

Well, I think, you know, if you, if you went back into like your crisis management kind of policy and say, okay, who can talk to the media, right? If something happens in your business, whether it's good news, right, you could have had a land a major client, or whether it's bad news that there's been a disaster in one of your plants. who could the media talk to? And those are the official spokespeople.

Right.

Also, if you are in a position on the social media team, that's part of your title, that's where you work, you are, you know, responsible for that area, then yes, you would be considered part of an official spokesperson. If the social media aspect falls under the marketing, then, you know, any people in marketing are going to be considered those official spokespersons, right? Because they have the social media under them. And probably not, again, the rank and file, but definitely anybody who has supervisory responsibilities for those individuals. And, you know, if you had like a social media coordinator, it's going to be in their employment agreement, right? What their role is. And any role that says that you can post on official business social media, you are that spokesperson because they just gave you that authority. And we have seen, we've actually had a case, this dealt with Twitter where one individual, you know, and he was in a marketing company which was outside of the business. And they, you know, sometimes marketing companies, they'll take care of multiple Twitter accounts for multiple business clients. And this guy, you know, instead of posting it on his personal Twitter, posted something not very good on the client's Twitter. And so that company lost that client, right? And he got fired because he did have the responsibility of posting and he just posted it wrong in the wrong account. And so we have to look at what authority and responsibility are the people given to find out who exactly are the spokespeople.

persons. Right.

But if you don't have that social media policy, right, that can lay out who's responsible and what are the expectations from the business for employees, then it's really hard to, to, to discipline an employee who's put up a controversial post because they were not on notice on what you expected from them. Right. They didn't sign anything. You don't have a policy. The other problem that a lot of times we get into is maybe the business has a policy, but they haven't been following it. And so, you know, it's not just having the policy, it's making sure that you're following that policy in order then to hold the employees accountable for what they've posted, if in any way it then is a detriment to the business. And, you know, all this stuff with social media policies, those are regulated through the National Labor Relations Board. They are the ones who take a look at sort of these termination lawsuits or wrongful termination lawsuits that employees are bringing up to take a look at whether there's a social media policy, whether it was followed, whether what the employee said raises to the level that's indicated in the policy or not. And they have been, you know, making these different decisions on these different social media policies and on these issues.

As it relates to a social media policy, and we're not going to get into crafting one certainly today, or something that needs to happen internally and work directly with someone, but From a big picture perspective, are there certain elements that if you don't have a policy, or if you have one but you want to double-check and go, I haven't even thought of that, are there certain elements that really should be included with every social media policy just from a general big picture perspective?

Yeah, so definitely from a general big picture, what you're trying to do is lay out the expectations that the company has for the employees when it comes to social media use and sort of give the employees some guidance as to how to use social media so that it does not impact negatively on the company. And so many times you'll see references to the anti-discrimination or sexual harassment policies that a company may already have. And so there'll be something in the social media policy that says, you know, what you can't do in person, you can't do online. Right? And so if you can't harass somebody in person, you definitely cannot harass somebody on social media. If you can't discriminate against somebody in person, you can't discriminate against somebody on social media. So that's one element that you usually see. You also usually see things like some general guidelines like, you know, don't be rude. Do not disparage any of the business's products or services. Now notice it doesn't say anything about disparaging their supervisor, right? So even though we might not like it, somebody can actually talk about their supervisor or manager on their Facebook posts. And that has been held to have been protected because the friends of that particular individual were other employees of the company. So it was like if they were all around the water cooler sort of talking about their bosses and things like that. We also know that the National Labor Relations Board treats managers and supervisors differently and hold them to a higher standard than they do with the regular staff, right? So we have to keep that in mind as well. You'll see components about what sort of the NLRB wants businesses to give some examples of what would be bad, what would an employee sort of be dinged for so that there's not any surprises, and what would some of those disciplines look like. Would it lead to termination? Would there be suspension? Would it be suspension without pay? Would it be that they have to take a training on that? And then you'll also see parts that says, you know, many of these policies, for example, will begin with, we know that social media has benefits, but we also know that the use of social media could have consequences and run risks. And so this is what's being offered to prevent things of that nature. Banks, because they have such high regulation on some things, also have to go a little step further in their social media policies to say that they adhere to all of the regulations that they're under in other things. So for example, if they have to put certain logos, right, on their website, on their official business social accounts as well, there'll be some direction as to whether employees can use or not use things like logos of the company or other intellectual property of the company. And there have been some sort of confusing or opposite decisions when it comes to using the company's logo. The NLRB has had one decision that said, you know, employees can use the logo if they're talking about their employer. But traditional trademark law says nobody can use a trademark unless they have express permission from the trademark owner. So those are all sort of still vague scenarios, but putting it into the social media policy is just a reminder, right, that you really shouldn't use it unless you have permission for it to do. And then there's always a section that Sort of gives a contact point, right, for who the employee can turn to if they have a question about the policy. You cannot tell an employee that before they post, they should talk to their supervisor. That is a restriction, a prior restriction of their freedom of speech, and so that is not permissible. But if they have a question of the policy, they can certainly go And ask that question to the supervisor. And I'm trying to think if there are any other large categories. There are other things. We have a checklist of what it is. I can't think of the other pieces right now.

What about the process of monitoring? So Facebook in particular, it can be a little bit muddy because not everything that people post on Facebook from their personal profile is public. If you go to Twitter, Most people, those tweets are public. If you go to LinkedIn, most of those posts that you made on LinkedIn are public. But on Facebook, you've got that granularity of visibility where you can make it public, you can make it visible to friends, friends of friends, you can pick specific groups. So if you wanted to only allow family members that you've added to a specific family group, they can see it. So that presents challenges, I know, from the banks that we've talked to about knowing what employees are actually saying, because unless you're friends with somebody, you may not be able to see what they're saying. So there's probably a lot of questions wrapped up in that statement, but I'll let you unpack all of that as far as monitoring. Should you, shouldn't you?

Yeah.

If you detect something that a friend says, should you report it to your employer? Or we've seen policies, because you and I have done some work together, where it says, you know, if you notice something, you have to report it. So now I got to turn my brother in, or I got to turn a coworker in. So all of that, go. Yeah, there's a lot.

Yes, monitoring is another component that we put into our social media policy because the NLRB has said if you are going to monitor, you need to stated so that employees know and do not have an expectation of that privacy. However, you are not allowed by the NLRB to look into password-protected types of accounts. You can't, you know, shoulder surf, for example, tell an employee, okay, you sign in and let me see what you got there. You can't force them to give you their password. If in any way that's going to affect their performance review, that is an LLRB violation, for example. You also cannot friend people under deceit. So trying to say, oh, you know, an employee is just going to, or a manager, for example, or supervisor is just going to friend all of his subordinates just to watch them so that he can get behind that password-protected wall, that is considered a violation. It's under deceit. Right now, that's not to say that there can be employees that maybe they started off as colleagues and then one of them got a promotion and is now their supervisor. There is no requirement in that situation that the supervisor then unfriend his subordinate, right? But it's probably a good idea just to keep everything safe that they wouldn't get back, you know, oh, you are illegally monitoring. what I'm saying. So if something is public and out there, and the best way to check if it's public is just, you know, on the search box or Google box, but the search box in Facebook, if you put something in and something comes out, then it's public, right? But if not, you have to be careful. The other thing that I would say is that reporting of if you see something, say something. So again, the best guidance that we have is that we strongly encourage people, if they see something that they think might be a problem, to let that point of contact know. It doesn't necessarily have to be their supervisor, but we don't mandate— it's not a requirement, right, that they tell, because when you put a requirement, then that means if they don't do it, they are then going to be penalized. And what would that penalty be? And that is a real disincentive for people. So usually on the social media policies that I've worked on, we say strongly encourage, but not required. It's a very—

Right.

You get into that requirement, it takes you to a very different level of liability. So you wanna be careful about that.

One of the things from listening to you talk over the many years that we've been friends is, um, an avoidance of absolutes in those policies.

Yes.

So not that you want to make it, you know, full of holes like it's a Swiss cheese document, but, you know, you can, or you are, you know, this is how you could if you wanted to. Um, you know, same thing on the positive side. For example, if If the, if the business has content, and we talk about this a lot as it relates to promoting positive information in Facebook in particular, the average organic percentage of visibility for a page is, you know, less than 5% these days. So if a page posts something, really not a lot of people are going to see it, but you can't mandate and say, hey, employee, You know, you have to share this with your friends. But again, avoiding absolutes, you can say, we encourage, or you are certainly eligible to, or you feel free, feel free to share this. Exactly. Share this content.

Share this content. Yeah. Unless, you know, you start— and we've talked about this— sort of like employee social advocate ambassador kind of individuals where they take training, they're given specific— they agree to certain content from the company to share that on. But that's sort of like the semi-official role that they take on, this employee advocacy role. And it's very structured.

Right.

It's very structured. It's not just haphazard. But there's nothing wrong in saying, We encourage, you know, if you wanna share something 'cause you're proud of us, that's awesome, but let people know that you work for us, right? Because you don't want people to say, oh, he's just saying that and we didn't even know he worked for the company, so how can we believe anything that he says? You know, so having sometimes certain disclaimers of, you know, I want— I know that I work here, but this is such a fabulous thing that they're doing and I wanna share it with you. You know, something like that—

Right.

Is so great For, for being picked up right from social, from a personal page rather than from a business page.

Right. And those are good examples where not only is the policy an important thing to have in place, but some sort of a training where you can get together and you can talk about it. Because if, if it's written in words in a document that, yeah, you can read it. Yeah, you can sign it, but Having that dialogue and being able to discuss, and whether they work with an official attorney that's familiar with it, or it's that designated individual that's gotten some training and they're the ones that's actually leading the discussions, but being able to do the what-ifs and say, you know, well, what are some of the ways that I can say that? And you've rattled off a number of really good ideas that if you want to repost this or reshare it. I love my job, or this is a great place to work, or it gives me goosebumps every time I see something that impacts the community. I know a lot of bankers that we work with are recovering from lack of sleep due to the demand of PPP and all the SBA lending activity.

Oh, yeah.

But you look at the millions of dollars and the businesses and the businesses that have employees, so there go the jobs that have been saved. There's a lot of really proud employees in the community banking space these days because of what the industry's been able to do for the small businesses that wouldn't have happened had the small banks taken it upon themselves to work until 10 or 11 o'clock or even 1 or 2 in the morning, as I've heard stories, and on the weekends to get these loans done. So you want to figure out a way that you can try to accentuate the positive. As well, and those are all, you know, the other side of this coin.

Absolutely, and I think right now, as you pointed out, it's a great opportunity to start recognizing employees. You know, give them a certificate, give them a gift card to a restaurant, you know, recognize that they've been doing all these long hours, and then highlight one of the customers that they got the PPP for, right? And you know what, the customer will share that and the employee will share that because it's a story about them. Right? Even though it's a business, it's the story about them.

Absolutely.

And I think it's so important that those stories get told because yes, a lot of the achievements of the smaller banks and these smaller businesses have sort of been overlooked, right, by the larger loans that have been out there, whether for good or bad, or the larger banks that have been taking the majority of this money. So for me, I would think this is a great opportunity, right, for these small community banks to really shine in this time where, you know, small businesses have been hurting, and that means all their workers have been hurting. So, you know, celebrating them, celebrating their clients, and, and that's something that can be put on social, and I think they would be happy to share it.

Yep. So let's Had to take a little positive break here because I want to go back to the somebody says something bad on social media and it blows up. But, you know, if an organization either maybe doesn't have a social media policy or it's one that really hasn't been looked at for a while just because they've never had to, and, you know, that's a situation that I think a lot of businesses in general are in. Granted, the banking industry is pretty good at Doing policies for everything, but for small businesses, let's say one of your employees makes a statement that is perceived, or maybe it is, I don't know, racist, and people realize that they work there, and then they approach you, they tag your business. Walk me through the thought process as the business owner of triaging that situation. Because now you've got a little smoldering fire that might even, you know, be more than just smoldering by the time it gets brought to your attention. Um, what's the thought process of a business owner when that happens to them?

Okay, well, um, first thing I would say, you know, I would always go back, is there a social media policy? If there is not a social media policy, you want to preface this that no business is too small to have a social media policy. If you have more than one person in your business that has any potential of putting something out on social media that could harm your company and you're only 2 people, have a social media policy. They don't have to be very elaborate, but just setting down those expectations are really important. The other thing that I would start with is what are the employment laws of my state? So for example, I'm located here in Georgia. We are an at-will state. Which means that employers can fire you for anything. Any— they don't even have to have a reason, just as long as it doesn't go against the Title VI Civil Rights Act, right? So it's not because of your gender, your race. It's not— and now with the Supreme Court decision, it's not because of your gender identity. So as long as it's not for one of those things, you're fine. And, you know, we do not have thought police. And that's what makes this so difficult, right? So being racist, is not a crime. It's what you do with it that could be the crime, right? And so that's what we're trying to look at. What is the conduct that we're trying to sort of change? The other thing is, who is the employee? You know, we have one scenario where maybe the employee is new, has never been trained, doesn't really know things. Can the employee still be saved? We have to look at, you know, it's all a balancing act, isn't it, between What exactly was said and the amount of damage that was done versus who this employee is in terms of the company. What if you have an employee of 20 years and they never did anything wrong? Right, and this is the first time anything has happened. Is it really fair, you know, just to cut them at that moment, or is this something that we can have a conversation, take them out of that forward-facing, customer-facing role that they had and talk about, well, what's going on, especially if we don't have a social media policy, right? That then we can depend on if we get sued for wrongful termination. Because the other thing, you know, Eric, you and I have spoken about is that people sue not necessarily because they have the best case, but because they felt—

Right.

Done wrong. And many times businesses will actually settle Because they don't wanna drag the lawsuit out. And so even if the business is right, they might just settle it to not have the big expenses, right? And so I think I told you that the New York transit system is probably the one that gets sued the most by people for $1,000, $2,000, and they haven't even been hurt. But for the transit system, it's so much easier to pay $1,000 to this person than pay, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to attorneys. To just sort of get away from that. And we even have a number of cases where the people weren't even in the bus. There was a case where the bus didn't even get out of the depot. You know, it was completely empty and 8 people sued.

Okay.

So it just goes to show you that even if you do everything right as a business, you may still be sued. And so what you're trying to do is to protect yourself as much that if you do get sued, The damage is minimal, if not zero. Okay? So first of all, keep that in mind that who the employee, would they have a wrongful termination suit? Is there another way to deal with this other than termination? Is there a suspension that could be held? Or is it just that, you know, maybe the company's values, this goes against those company values, and then you do have a reason for saying, no, this is inappropriate. There are many banks who have sort of like a statement of value or a code of ethics that they feel is worthy of, if it's violated, then there's going to be some kind of discipline, but they do have to explain that. And I wanna go back to something that you said, Eric, about training and how important it is, 'cause even the FIECE, and I hope I did that right.

No.

Is it F-I-E-C-E? I always get that wrong.

I always switch it up.

When they put out their guidance— F—

Yes. There we go. FFIEC, Federal Financial Institutions Examinatory Council. You were close though.

Yeah, when they put out their guidance, you know, they— on social media, they called it risk management guidance, right? And one of the things they said is having that social media policy is not enough. You've got to train your employees. You have to help them think through this process. And so I think that's important. Did this employee have any training? Did they have any expectation to this? And having conversations with the employee, right? We always talk about those exit interviews with employees, and it's really hard when the employee is exiting not of their free will, right?

Right.

So you definitely want to look at your employment laws that you have there, talk to your HR department, about, you know, has there been disciplinary issues before? Have they been warning? Have all the evaluations been stellar and this is so out of the ordinary? And this is part of why the training is important to you, because there you can really discuss with employees that the world has changed, that employees used to have a life separate from their job, and it's really difficult to have that separation between life and work now because everything is so online. And for so many people, especially Especially right now during COVID where we had so many people working from home, right?

Yeah.

They were at home. People weren't seeing them in the businesses. They weren't seeing them in the bank. They were interacting with them in a totally different scenario. It's very difficult to sort of separate work and life, that personal life. And so when you have a training and you can discuss these things with your employees, they can have those moments of, yeah, I never thought of it like that. Yeah, you know, that I can see where that blurry line is almost erased. right now, that there is no separation between these 2 things. And so, you know, really looking at each situation sort of uniquely, independently from anything else that's going on, and think back at the values of your bank and think of who this employee is, think of your community. I mean, I know that seems so complicated and so complex of all these things, but that's what this kind of new era of being online is asking us to do. We can't just, you know, have knee-jerk reactions, right?

Right.

We have to think through the process of what happened and what should be the consequences. And also, how do we want to be viewed in the future, not just from our clients and our community, but also from our other employees? This can definitely impact employee morale and motivation in the bank to see how are you treating this particular employee. And so it's really important to think about those things before we just have sort of this knee-jerk reaction, even though—

Yeah.

Our community may be clamoring, do something now, do something now. But being very thoughtful about the process, having that investigation to see exactly what occurred, Finding out how far it actually went, how broad. I mean, it might just be that it got to a few people, but those people have— are really loud voices, right? And so they can make it seem a lot bigger or a lot worse than what it truly is.

You know, one thing that, that just popped into my head as I heard you talking is during that training process and when you're bringing people together, Would it be safe to say that even just talking about this or giving examples from other situations just to make employees aware of stuff could be enough of a detriment to just get people thinking before they click on the enter button and they send that comment to social media? Um, You know, we've talked a little bit about it internally, and I've shared a couple of the social media posts that you and I have talked about, but I shared those internally with our team just so that we here can see how a comment that is less than, you know, 3 lines of text on a private Facebook group gets grabbed and pushed out that ends up costing somebody their job. Just making people aware that Oh yeah, I guess that does have some potential ramifications. Not getting into the nuances of whether what they said was or wasn't okay under freedom of speech or violated a policy, but just the potential for you creating this rat's nest that I don't think anybody really wants to get into at the end of the day, whether you've got the legal right to be racist online, which Which seems like almost a creepy thing to say out loud, but reminding people of the fact that there are things that you do that will have consequences and just getting them to think a little bit more. I don't know if that's enough, but—

Yeah. So my view is that we cannot assume that our employees know, right, what can actually get them in trouble.

Right.

From a standpoint that let's assume nobody knows anything and we're going to raise awareness, right? And we've also talked about things like beyond the training posters or pins or, you know, a slogan that says sort of, you know, think before you click or something like that. I know that right now our Chamber of Commerce, as an example, because they're getting ready to reopen the businesses and are so concerned All right, people are still concerned about getting out and they've got to bring up consumer confidence so that people will go out and spend money. They're starting a program that's called Ready, Set, Go Safely. Right, and so they are encouraging their members to sort of have guidelines posted and they're going to have like a window cling that says that they are part of the Ready, Set, Go Safely. thing. And so there, there's sort of— it's symbolic, right, of bringing that up so that people can see and have confidence that that business is doing whatever it can to be safe for their customers. And so I think those reminders are very important because lots of times you don't hear about all the stories that happen in other places. Lots of times businesses don't want to advertise that they had a fire an employee because of something that they wrote out there, because it also gives that negative publicity to them, right?

Right.

Things that never sort of see the light of day because of how it can hurt the reputation of the business, and so they won't put it out there. So sometimes having these trainings, having a safe place where employees can really ask questions, well, I don't know, how does this look? Does this sound okay? Can I do this? Can I do that? But in a safe place, right, where then they can go through these explorations, go through some role play, go through some what-if scenarios and get some ideas of what they could do or should stay away from, right? We can't necessarily tell them you cannot do this in that way, as you were talking about absolutes, you know, and people— You know, will, will charge me as being an attorney that most of my answers always begin with depends. It depends. You know, this clear-cut answer, and I can't give it to them because there's so many factors around, but give them examples that they can explore and think about in a safe place to do that.

Yeah. Now, one question that came up in a conversation that I had with a banker is they In their policy, encourage, and again, I don't know if you can mandate this, that's an absolute, so I've avoided it, but they encourage their employees to put in their social profiles, views equal my own, or views equal mine, as an effort to distance themselves from being a voice of the organization regardless of what their position is. I'm wondering from a big picture hypothetical, non-legally binding opinion perspective, what your thoughts are on— they give enough backdoors to be comfortable there, but what, what your thoughts are on having that as part of your social profiles. And is it even more important today, or does that really not hold any water in today's day and age?

Yeah, so you'll see a lot of social media policies also have sort of a disclaimer clause and ask their employees, you know, put sort of that these views are only mine, they do not represent the views of my employer, especially if they're gonna post something about their employer.

Yup.

And so there have been, you know, different opinions depending on what's written, depending again on who writes it, whether that is valid enough or not. So you'll, lots of times in my Twitter profile, I'll have retweets are not endorsements. Right. So that they don't think just because I retweet it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with it. Maybe I just want to spotlight something that I don't agree with. So you'll see these kinds of disclaimers and, you know, the lawyer answer, it depends on who puts it and it depends on what is written. I think the higher you are—

There's that D word again.

Yeah, I know. But I think the higher you are in the hierarchy, the harder it is to make that argument that you are not representing the company, especially when we Stocks can go up and down depending on who the CEO is. If there's a change in the CEO, if the CEO got hurt, you know, stocks go up and down. So I think it's really difficult to make that argument once you get higher up the food chain.

Yep. Okay, cool. Well, I just took a peek at the schedule, and the last time I looked at it was 20 after, and now it's 1:51 Eastern. So we burnt through almost a whole hour's worth of discussion. And we did it without any slides, and unfortunately the only thing anybody had to look at was your picture on Free Webinar Wednesdays and my video of me just nodding and agreeing and smiling. But any, any other thoughts before we wrap up as it relates to just this issue, the sensitive nature either for employers to think about, or as users, which we all are, of social media, just to keep maybe in the back of our minds, or maybe some good next steps?

Yeah, so, you know, as we say, sort of think before you post, think before you react is probably the biggest tip that I can give, because you don't know exactly all the facts of what happened maybe in that scenario, and you need to really investigate to know before you just say, oh, you're out, that's it, kind of a thing. And then the other thing that I would say is to recognize that employees do have freedom of speech. They can post things on their social. You just can't prohibit it just completely out of hand. And so to recognize that they have that, but then you have to have that 2-way conversation with your employees that they recognize that the business also has a right and responsibility to protect their reputation. And if they are a publicly traded company, even more so because they have to protect the benefits and assets to their shareholders, right?

Right.

And so look at who are our stakeholders and what are the responsibilities that we have to our stakeholders, whether they're community members, whether they're clients, whether they're our employees, because that's the other thing that we have to look at. It may be an issue with one employee, but what about all the other employees? As we move forward with this. So again, don't instantly react. Take a pause, think about what's happening, and then if you need some guidance, find the guidance. I always suggest have a social media policy and then do some training around that so that you are as protected as possible.

Cool. Well, Deborah, I know this isn't the last time we'll talk about this. I know we've got at least one more more formal conversation in the calendar, and there may be others to come of it as well. But I really appreciate the, the quick and available schedule shuffling that you made for me today. I don't know if I said at the beginning, but as I woke up this morning, I kind of had the epiphany that this is probably something that we should have a dialogue about, and I really appreciate you making time for me and the rest of the Free Webinar Wednesdays audience today. So means a lot and good to hear your voice. I'll say good to see you on the next one because I know that will be video, so we'll test that before we actually go live. But good to hear your voice as always.

Thank you so much, Eric, for having me. I'm sorry about the webcam issue. We've got to go figure that out now. But thank you, all of you, for listening in, and thank you, Eric, for having these Free Webinar Wednesdays.

Cool. Sounds good. Well, that wraps today's show, folks. Thanks for joining me live. Thanks for listening to the recording if that's what you're doing right now. And, uh, some really good information. Um, Deborah, folks wanted to reach out to you and maybe ask some more specific questions, uh, maybe explore the possibility of engaging you maybe on a more official basis where you don't have to talk so hypothetically. How would they— what's the best way to track you down?

Yeah, so I put in the chat box my direct email address. It's deborah@deborahgonzalez.com. Pretty simple there, you know, and you can just shoot me an email. I'll be happy to set up some time and we can talk.

Excellent, sounds good. Well, thanks again for being my guest. Thanks for watching this week's show, and we'll look forward to seeing everybody Again, next week and future weeks here at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Until then, make it a great week, everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.