In a recent post – as well as in several LinkedIn professional groups – I posed this question: Who owns your LinkedIn profile? The options, to keep matters reasonably simple, were (1) you as a professional or (2) your current employer, which you represent as an employee.
The question generated feedback from a variety of thought leaders in social media, human resources and recruiting, law and other disciplines. Some respondents might not even declare themselves “thought leaders,” just interested parties with a point of view. Following is selected feedback from LinkedIn group respondents. (See the original post for discussion that occurred here at Agency Babylon.)
Paul Godfread, Attorney at Godfread Law Firm, PC: I have heard of one instance where an employer required an employee to create a LinkedIn account, then once the employment was finished asked that former employee to delete the account. I don’t know the specifics, but I believe it had to do with clients and prospective clients. I assume the employer was asking its employees to develop leads and make sales through LinkedIn and didn’t want the former employee to “steal” the company’s clients. Not sure the employer would have a leg to stand on in that situation as typically client lists are confidential, but LinkedIn contacts are public. A company might have a concern if whatever their employee was doing on LinkedIn or elsewhere might damage their reputation or show the employee was competing with the employer.
Marlene Phipps, Partner at Celarity, Recruiting for Marketing, Creative and Interactive Professionals: I think companies should care about and offer guidance for employee profiles on LinkedIn. In addition to adhering to brand standards, employees should be respectful, responsible, ethical and intelligent about what they put out there regarding their current or past employers. A rule of thumb for all LinkedIn activity or any form of social media for that matter, is that it should reflect the same ethics, values and confidentiality policies employees are expected to adhere to everyday. Examples of what should never be disclosed; anything to do with numbers, non-public financial or operational information, strategies, forecasts, compensation and anything with a dollar-figure attached to it. If it has not been made public by an employer, it does not belong on your LinkedIn profile. I actually saw a LinkedIn profile that had an employers non-public financial information on it! A great example of a company offering guidance to their employees regarding social media is Best Buy. Here is a link to Best Buy Social Media Guidelines: http://bit.ly/4EKab7.
Ivan Nunez, Interactive Strategist and Web Consultant: I think companies can offer guidance to help employees best describe the company, but I agree with others here that see profiles as personal information. Instead of policing employees’ LinkedIn profiles for content, companies could encourage employees to link to each other’s profile for internal professional networking.
Mark Palony, Social media and marketing communications expert: If you are representing yourself as an industry expert – especially in discussions such as this – then I think your employer does have a vested interest. Guidance and training are certainly part of the equation, but I would draw the line at outright control, unless your activities are directly related to a marketing campaign.
Rachel Hodges, Director of Client Services at Forma Life Science Marketing: Our company uses LinkedIn to connect and/or stay connected with industry peers and prospects. In this regard, we are encouraged to use the site regularly and continue to seek new ways to use LI to improve our reach. Recently, we had company wide LI training to improve our knowledge of LI and determine how to best utilize it to assist our marketing efforts.
Ralph Delzepich, Database Administrator at RWTH Aachen (Germany) reports that a German attorney recently took up same issue in her country. In Germany, a site called Xing is the dominant player, and her insight is that when an employee uses Xing for work on behalf of the company that profile and all the contacts belong to the company.
Join the conversation here or in these LinkedIn groups (you must log in to LinkedIn for access to the discussions):
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February 15, 2010 at 12:21 PM
Albert Maruggi
OK the old adage “Show me who your friends are and I’ll show you who you are” is a bit scary in the social media age. I had this happen to me where someone on one side of the political spectrum made a comment about a person who was my Facebook friend from the other side of the political spectrum. It dawned on me that this transparency could (A) open up a dialogue that is constructive, don’t interpret constructive to me compromise, but instead it means an enlightened understanding of another’s principles. Or (B) exacerbate the climate of “camps” you know, Fox vs MSNBC etc., which is extended to all other aspects of our life.
In the case of LinkedIn, here’s a possible case a boss might say to their employee: Why are three people from a competing firm in your network, and further, why did you give them a recommendation! The nerve, you’ve endorsed the competition.
Yup, that can be a problem and our competitive culture is what needs to change, not the way we treat each other as humans. I truly believe the openness of being social online exposes the frailties of capitalism and the realities of society’s definition of “success”
February 11, 2010 at 4:33 PM
Paul Godfread
It really is a blind spot for many companies as they rush to adopt social media as a tool for doing business. Even though this data is now public, do companies really want to forbid employees from connecting or friending just to keep that data private? I think not, but I know there are companies that will try.
Thanks for including me as a thought leader.
February 11, 2010 at 4:27 PM
» Who owns your digital life?
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