Montana city apologizes for demanding passwords to job applicants’ accounts; employers fret over what workers say online; generation gap highlights different views of office technology ethics and etiquette

VARIOUS DATELINES
The ethical implications of social networking were examined in several major stories last week. Among them:

• Officials in Bozeman, Montana, stung by public criticism, apologized for its now-ended practice of requiring applicants for municipal jobs to provide usernames and passwords for social-networking sites. According to the Wall Street Journal, Bozeman city manager Chris Kuluski said that while “the city of Bozeman believes we have a responsibility to ensure candidates hired for positions of public trust are subject to a thorough background check,” the extent of the regulation demanding a candidate’s password, username, or other Internet information “appears to have exceeded that which is acceptable to our community.” Among other problems, the requirement ran afoul of sites’ user policies, which often require that members not pass along their passwords to others.
• A McClatchy Newspapers analysis examines the current state of tension between employers and employees who frequent social-networking sites. McClatchy’s Diane Stafford examines the plight of office manager Jeff LeMasters, who prohibited use of cell phones, texting, and the Internet when employees of his store were on duty, but was perplexed about what to do when an employee started “trashing” the store on Facebook. Stafford writes: “The world of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube postings is giving employers headaches. Often, employers like LeMasters are exploring on a case-by-case basis what rights they have to police employees’ blogs and social networking pages. LeMasters and business partner Randy Benton quickly learned they had no constitutional right to fight the worker’s postings, but they did have a clear course because some of the Internet use had occurred at the store.” Usually, though, there is not such a bright line to guide employers because many cases fall into the legal and ethical haze between employers’ rights and employees’ free-speech guarantees.
• Office protocol regarding Tweeting, texting, and social networking throughout the working day is becoming a generational issue, according to a report from National Public Radio. Joshua Brockman notes that “recent studies show real tensions are rising between Gen Y, or 20-something employees; Gen X, or 30-something workers; and their older, less tech-savvy, baby boomer bosses.” Brockman cites a recent study by LexisNexis that shows the friction becomes hottest during meetings. LexisNexis’s Michael Walsh tells NPR: “You can have Gen Y-ers who are busy looking at their BlackBerrys. They’ve got their laptops flipped open, they’re engaging in social networking right during the course of a meeting, and you have a boomer rolling their eyes, not understanding it…. Two-thirds of boomers that were surveyed indicated that they felt that use of devices, technology — such as e-mail, social networking, the Internet, etc. — contributed to a decline in office etiquette.”

Sources: Wall Street Journal, June 23 — NPR, June 22 — McClatchy, June 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 22 — Related Newsline story, June 8 — Related Newsline story, May 25 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 6 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 23 — Lexis-Nexus Technology Gap Survey, undated.