Tag Archives: Employment

April 24, 2012 · 9:37 am

Handing Over The Facebook Keys

By now you’ve probably heard of some employer who is asking potential employees for access to their Facebook accounts as a condition of employment. It’s become widespread enough that Maryland recently became the first state to prohibit employers from asking employees and applicants for social media passwords and login information. The law would prohibit an employer from taking or threatening any form of adverse action based on an employee’s or job applicant‘s refusal to provide a user name or password to a personal account.  Senators from New York and Connecticut are moving towards doing something similar on a national level.  Think this is just hypothetic?  A teacher’s aide in Michigan was let go from her job after a school administrator demanded that she turn over her Facebook password and she refused.  I have two thoughts and would love to hear yours.

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Image via CrunchBase

First – good for the legislature.  Second – how pathetic are the employers who would do this and how desperate have the folks become who feel they must acquiesce?

I’ve hired many people over the years, most of them before Facebook (or the Internet).  While I’ll admit there were a couple of duds in the mix, I wouldn’t have figured that out had I had access to their personal relationships, photos of them on their own time, or an understanding of what videos they watched, music they played, or articles they read.  To me this is the equivalent of demanding the keys to someone’s home to do a complete search of their wardrobe, their books, their medicine cabinet, and their kitchen. None of that is necessary to do a good hire and asking about some of it is already illegal.

Yes, it’s important to check out prospective employees, and that’s way easier today than it has ever been.  Most people are careless about leaving footprints in cyberspace and it’s relatively easy to find out if the candidate who says they are one thing are, in fact, something quite different.   For those who are careful, there are services available – as there have always been – to help with background checks.  Frankly, anyone evil enough to tell big lies about themselves is probably crafty enough to keep the lies off the web.  Besides – even if my buddy says you can check out his Facebook mail, I didn’t give you permission to look at what I sent him – that’s another set of issues completely.

What do you think – would you ever give up access to your account to get a job?  Would you ever demand that access before you hire someone?

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April 10, 2012 · 10:04 am

A Little Business Story About Managing In Difficult Times

Suppose you have a small but very popular business. You began as a handful of people, most of whom are still with you after you kicked out a couple of uneven performers. While you’ve added some staff as the business grew, every employee is a key employee since there really aren’t any overlapping roles.

Thirty five years go by, the business grows, and while there are good years and bad, the product mix is generally well-received by customers and reviewers. In an industry where products come and go very quickly, this one endures, even though it went through a period where everyone wondering if it had lost its way.  The product focus changes with each release cycle to match the times – no one has ever called your business stagnant even though its product sector has gone through some very rough times. In fact, there is an entire secondary business of add-ons and information providers that has grown up around your business. Not a bad place to be.

One day, you learn that a key employee is sick and several months later he dies. You adjust by hiring someone who can do what he did albeit without the strong emotional bond to the team as the late employee.  A few years later, another key member – your right hand – passes away suddenly.  The team is devastated and there are real questions about  the ability of the business to continue.  The emotional toll on you is palpable and the business community wonders if you’ll retire and shut it down.

Instead, you decide to replace the man who everyone thought was irreplaceable. You let customers know that it will be different, and while you will make best efforts to minimize the differences, you are up front about it being different and don’t try to pretend as if nothing had changed.  You bring on more employees to reinforce some of the differences, creating a transformed product in the process.  You release new product – one developed primarily with an outside team for a fresh perspective.  It’s very well received, and breathes life into the older products, and customers continue to buy it in droves.  The business remains true to its core values and it’s obvious that the old and new employees are on the same page thanks to excellent leadership.

It’s really a textbook case on managing business transformation in difficult times.  I was privileged to witness it myself last night.  Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

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February 29, 2012 · 11:25 am

Your Boss Is Making You Sick

There was an interesting piece in Lifehacker yesterday that summarized a number of studies on the effects a bad boss can have on your life.  Among other sources, it cites a study by Université Francois Rabelais, and published in the Journal of Business and Psychology (but you  can read about it in The Atlantic).  The gist of that study as well as the others they mention is that the effect of having a bad boss can go way beyond the office:

The psychological climate in which you work has a lot to do with your health and happiness. Recent research has found, perhaps not surprisingly, that bad bosses can affect how your whole family relates to one another. They can also affect your physical health, raising your risk for heart disease.

The Lifehacker article goes on to discuss a number of ways in which one can deal with a bad boss including hobbies, meditation, the HR department, leaving, and others. Of interest to me is that they don’t discuss my preferred solution which is not to get yourself working for a bad boss in the first place.

As I’ve mentioned before, the very first question one should ask when discussing a new job opportunity with a recruiter is “to whom do I report?”  Once you have that name, it’s on you to do every bit of research you can to find out if that person is a fantastic supervisor or Miranda Priestly, the bad boss from hell in The Devil Wears Prada.  Talk to contacts at the company or people who’ve worked for/with the boss-to-be.  A nice title, a nice paycheck, and other things should not cloud your thinking about the potential gig if the boss doesn’t check out.

Of course many of us have been in a situation where the boss changes – the dream for whom you went to work is promoted or leaves and working for the new boss is less preferable than sitting at home ripping out your fingernails with a pliers.  Having had that happen to me on a few occasions, I took my own advice and left.  Loved the company, loved my co-workers, loved my job, hated my boss.  No contest.  Is that always the smartest choice?  Yes, as long as your perspective isn’t focused solely on money (and I get that sometimes it needs to be) as these studies show.  It’s definitely not the easiest choice.

What do you think?  Have you ever left a job you loved because of a bad boss?

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