If you’re responsible for firing people at your company, make sure to remember one important social media rule.
If the person you are firing has the keys to your social media presence (such as your Twitter account), it might be an idea to change the password *before* firing that person. Otherwise, you might find that you end up being a little more “transparent” about the internal workings of your company you were planning.
Take The Plough pub in the pretty English village of Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, for instance.
The folks there don’t normally tweet very often, but some messages have just popped up on their Twitter account which will raise some eyebrows:
We’d like to inform you that we’ve just fired our head chef.
Unfortunately he wanted to have a weekend off this month and Christmas Day this year for family commitments so we thought we’d sack him
Yeah a week before Christmas!
We don’t care that he has a 7 1/2 month old baby daughter.
So anyway come on down and continue to pay a premium for Australian sirloins, New Zealand lamb and everything else that is bought from asda.
There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that the Plough Pub’s head chef has just lost his job. That’s not fun at any time of year, and we hope he can find gainful employment soon.
The good news is that despite this career setback he’s giving helpful tips for folks looking to have a seasonal lunch. How very charitable of him. Maybe he’ll be pointing folks towards ASDA Gift vouchers on Facebook next.
When people lose their jobs, emotions can run high.
Don’t risk your company being the victim of a hack by a disgruntled ex-employee or having your social media accounts hijacked by soon-to-be ex-staff live tweeting redundancies.
Oh, and one final thought. If they know your social media passwords – what other passwords might they still be able to use?
Surely another lesson is to Be Nice To Staff.
The timeline of the chef @chefjimknight suggests he actually set up the account, with his employer's permission. So he didn't "steal" the password per se. He made it!
Which suggests more that the employer was blind to the power of social media and had no policy.
<stands by, waiting for twitter implosion>
Quote: "The good news is that despite this career
setback he’s giving helpful tips for folks looking to have a
seasonal lunch. How very charitable of him. " No he
isn't. He's being sarcastic. Food stuff at
"The Plough" is actually bought from Asda and
sold at a premium as "Australian Sirloin" and
"New Zealand" lamb.