Question

Everyone makes mistakes. Some are more costly than others. By cost, a negative or inappropriate post can cost someone his or her job. A company may lose sales or stock value. Search the Internet for an example of a social media mistake.

1. Describe the situation.
2. Summarize the consequences/outcome.
3. Why do you think the outcome was fair/just?
4. Do you think people should lose their jobs as a result of personal social media posts? Explain.

Answer 1

Social Media can be defined as a double-headed sword. It can be used for promoting our products and services which will, in turn, help us to achieve high ROI. At the same time, one should be aware of the consequences that are going to happen due to various factors. Targetting the audience should be done very carefully as this involves various possible outcomes. Using this in a different way may lead to issues sometimes it results in a data breach and sometimes may lead to loss to the company or job losses.

There are many incidents that lead to serious effects on the company. Employees when tweeting or commenting using Social Media should be very careful and have to extra cautious while dealing with the posts that involve organizations or their clients. There are many instances where a company has lost its stock value when an employee commented on their yearly results prior to the official release by the company. In a few cases of acquisitions where the deal was very competitive pricing. One of the employees commented that their company is going to acquire the organization for some good amount which was mentioned by the employee. This resulted in the competitors to gain the advantage and they were successful in acquiring that company. This way due to the small mistake of that employee lead in losing the acquisition. Being a multi-million deal it was a huge loss to that company.

We may see this as a minor mistake but when we consider the overall outcome. We may see that it affected a large number of people. An organization with shares will be responsible for answering too many shareholders. This way, it affects the income and lives of many people. There is a high possibility that due to the sensitive information being disclosed to the third parties results in the decrease in share value of that company and also it has an impact on salaries and revenue. Comment on social media on client accounts may result in losing that client and this way client retention value of that company goes very low and this leads to the decrease in stock value of that company.

Every company has very well structured policy for its social media. It limits people to comment on social media. There are many ways to deal with this complication. One basic thing is everyone should endorse their comment as personal view and they should refrain from commenting on organizations and clients. This will have impact on reputation of the company. Hence as per disciplinary action it is wise to remoe an employee from the company after careful analysis. This wll change case to case.