Maybe you haven’t encountered any problems with employee posts on Facebook, MySpace and the like. The question is: Should you wait till you have a problem?

Consider the numbers — and the odds that your organization will have a problem:

• About half of all adults in the U.S. have a Facebook or MySpace account.
• The number of people using Twitter has grown by 1,300% in the past 12 months.

So it’s a pretty good bet that some of your employees using those sites at some time or another, and for who-knows-what.

Further, a study by Deloitte of 2,000 workers nationwide showed:

• 74% of employees who responded said they were aware that such sites make it “easier” to damage an employer’s reputation.
• 53% said their networking pages weren’t an employer’s business; that number rose to 63% for employees in the 18-to-34 age bracket.
• 17% said their companies had policies regarding posts to social-networking sites.

It’s another matter altogether whether you have the time and resources to monitor employee activity — at work or at home — on such sites and how postings might affect your company’s reputation.

Still, you can have in place a simple policy that gives you the authority to take steps should you somehow uncover a damaging entry. And having a policy removes the “I didn’t know” excuse if an employee does post something damaging.

So, what should a policy look like? Generally, the less complicated the better. In fact, yours can boil down to two main parts:

1. Establish that employees have no right to absolute privacy when they post on a social-networking site. And it doesn’t matter where they connect from. If it’s on the site, it can be read. And it can be used as grounds to discipline an employee.
2. Remind them that the policy extends to instances of harassment, discrimination and any other behaviors that are barred by law or company policy.

Don’t forget to note that the company has no desire to play Internet cop or keep employees from enjoying social-networking sites. The policy is in place to protect the company and its employees, not to prevent people from using the Web sites in usual, harmless ways.

Here’s an example of one company social-networking policy.

Suppose an angry employee uses a social-networking Web site to trash your company, your managers and even your customers. Can you legally take action against the employee? The results of a landmark federal-court case will provide the answer.

Combine the specter of layoffs, pay freezes and benefit cuts with the popularity of sites like MySpace and Facebook, and you have what’s become a not-uncommon situation: Employees — from home and on their own time — criticizing their employers for all the Internet world to see.

Could they be fired?
In the court case in New Jersey, two restaurant employees created and contributed to a forum about their workplace on MySpace.com. They e-mailed invitations to co-workers, who then had to log in using a personal e-mail address and a password.

The two employees criticized the restaurant’s decor, ridiculed its customers — including sex-laced jokes — and made harsh comments about their supervisors.

The employees charge that their managers illegally accessed their online communications in violation of federal wiretapping statutes and that the managers also violated their privacy under New Jersey law.

So, here’s what the court will decide:

• Are off-work Internet postings about employers grounds for discipline by the employers?
• Do password-only postings have special privacy protections that preclude any type of discipline by employers?
• Can employers establish policies about employee expression and attitude that extend to Web postings?

We’ll keep you posted on the outcome.

Note: Some states protect employees who engage in lawful, off-duty activities from being fired or disciplined. While private conversations might be covered under those laws, none of the statutes specifically addresses social networking or blogging.

• First and foremost, lawmakers recognize that a company’s first concern is running a business without interference caused by politics. With that in mind, you have every right to restrict discussions and other expressions (such as signs or campaign buttons) if you feel they’re harmful to conducting business and keeping harmony in the workplace. 
• Some states – such as California, Mississippi, Missouri and New York – have laws that bar employers from penalizing employees for their outside political activities. For instance, one case involved an employer who tried to force an employee to remove a political bumper sticker because the employee’s vehicle was parked in a company lot. 
• Be careful of state laws that bar employers from making political appeals to employees. Arizona, for one, has a law that prohibits the distribution of paychecks in envelopes bearing political messages, and Pennsylvania courts have penalized employers that warned employees of potential job losses if a certain candidate were elected. 
• If you have policies about restricting political speech or activity in the workplace, be sure to: (a) distribute copies of the policy to all employees, (b) enforce the policies equally, without regard to political viewpoint, and (c) respond promptly to complaints about managers or co-workers retaliating against or harassing employees based upon political affiliation or beliefs.

The site is called Glassdoor.com. It allows users to, among other things, write reviews about their company and check salary information. If you’ve ever done an employee-satisfaction survey, think of Glassdoor in that way – except the world gets to see the survey responses. 

Some less-than-complimentary posts already on the site:

• Wells Fargo: “A great place to work if you like getting yelled at constantly,” although the writer does say the company has great benefits. 
• Google: “The perks are great, like getting free food (though quality is getting ho-hum lately)” and “Management is mostly useless and doesn’t know how to manage projects, let alone people.”

The warning came in a case involved the city of Ontario, CA, which took disciplinary action against an employee who was charged with using the employer e-mail system to send and receive sexually explicit material. 

The employer had collected the damning e-mails and presented them as evidence to support the discipline. 

However, the employee found a loophole in previous rulings that said employers owned any e-mails sent and received on the employer’s system: The system wasn’t owned by the employer; it was operated by an outside contractor. 

So, even though the employer paid a fee for the system, the court said, it didn’t own the system, meaning all e-mails on the system had 4^th Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure and such e-mails are protected by the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), which prohibits providers from divulging the contents of any communication that is maintained on the service unless the request is accompanied by search a warrant. 

The research firm Radicati Group says about 28% of employers use an outside vendor for e-mail and are subject to the access restrictions cited in the 4^th Amendment and the SCA.

Whether the topic is as fluffy as a workplace romance or as tense as a looming layoff, people are going to talk about it, and only head-in-the-clouds managers will ever believe they can play Gossip Cop and shut all of it down. 

There are times, though, when you will have to play hardball with gossipers: 

When an employee spreads gossip with or about a customer. People whose gossiping spreads outside the workplace – for instance, to or about customers – can have a killer effect on business. 

When gossip rises to the level of slander. This is a tough call because it requires HR or another manager to be judge and jury, and make a decision about how harmful the gossip is. Rule of thumb: When  someone’s spreading stories that harm another employee’s  reputation, err on the side of caution and order the gossiper to stop. If you let it go, you could find yourself party to a lawsuit. 

When it involves confidential company information. It could be financial or product data that could cause problems if made public. The company has a right to keep such (presumably legal) information under wraps, and employees who whisper about it to others are violating confidentiality rules. 

Keep in mind that sometimes gossip is a symptom of a larger problem in a workplace. For example, maybe managers just don’t communicate adequately and employees just fill in the blanks based on sketchy information. In those situations, the gossip often makes the situation out to be worse than it really is.

Sometimes, the road to a lawsuit or other trouble can be lined with good intentions – such as implementing a diversity program that in the end satisfies no one and angers just about everyone

The problems often begin with the most innocent and well-meaning initiatives: for instance, a mentoring program for historically overlooked groups or an outreach effort to hire in low-income communities.

Some HR managers who’ve tried those approaches then had to battle against charges of “reverse discrimination” or favoritism. It’s at that point, they’ve said to themselves, “Wasn’t this supposed to be a good thing?”

Diversity can be a good thing when it’s implemented properly. As a guide to proper implementation – and a lesson in diversity do’s and don’ts – consider the analysis by employment-law expert David Haase of three recent landmark legal battles over diversity:

Bernstein v. St. Paul Companies
The battle in this suit swirled around a statement issued by the company’s CEO, who sought to make certain that employees knew he supported HR’s diversity efforts.

The CEO wrote a letter to all employees that stated, in part, that he “did not want the company to consist exclusively of white men.”

Right after that, the CEO and the HR manager found themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit filed by white men at the company who said the statement was proof of intent to hold them back while promoting women and minorities.

The company ended up winning the suit, mainly because in the same letter the CEO also said the company was committed to hiring and promoting “the most talented people that are available … irrespective of whether they are of a certain gender or of a certain race.”

The lesson: Proclaiming support for diversity is OK, as long as it comes with the stipulation that everyone is going to get a fair shake.

Buonanno v. AT&T Broadband, LLC
What happens when an employee refuses to sign on to a diversity program and openly defies its intent? That question got answered in a lawsuit filed by an employee who said his religious beliefs blocked him from recognizing the “value” of some groups, such as homosexuals.

The employee asked for a religious accommodation resulting in an exemption from the policy to “value all individuals.” The company refused the accommodation and fired him.

In the end, a judge ordered the company to rehire the employee, with the stipulation that the employee would not engage in discrimination or harassment of the groups in question.

The lesson: Such disputes usually are decided on a case-by-case basis, but the important point is that even if an employee doesn’t fully sign on to a diversity program, he or she must commit to treating all people in the workplace equally and with respect.

Moranski v. General Motors
An employee claimed that he was discriminated against because he was not allowed to form his own religious affinity at work, even though the company sponsored affinity groups – as part of a diversity program — based on race, national origin, gender and sexual orientation, and provided those groups with meeting space and other resources.

The company’s affinity-group policy specifically did not allow any group that promoted or advocated any religious or political position.

What happened? A court dismissed the employee’s claim while noting that the company didn’t promote any religious group over another, so there was no discrimination in the policy of barring all religious groups.

The lesson: You don’t have to extend diversity programs to every group in the universe, but you do have to make certain that no one group is provided with an advantage or penalized with a disadvantage.

The good thing about presidential campaign politics is that it can bring people together at work. The bad thing about it is that it can bring people together at work.

We’re getting to the point in the campaign when people start picking sides for real. The Mike Gravels, Duncan Hunters and other pretenders have been weeded out, and now the stage is set for Us vs. Them.

And that raises two questions: 1. Should you try to put a lid on political talk in the workplace? 2. Can you?

When to step in

Let’s answer the second question first. Yes, you can restrict what people say and when they say it. The First Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t give people a blank check to say whatever they want whenever they want. Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers recognized that you’ve got a business to run.

The answer to the first question is a little trickier. But most experts say to take a laid-back approach.

Or look at it this way: Did you try to stop discussion in your company the Monday morning after the Super Bowl? Of course not. People are going to chat about some topics, and if they’re not talking politics, they’ll be talking about something else.

Your best bet: Deal with over-the-edge types individually. If their political discussions get intimidating or disruptive, give them a warning to lighten up. If they ignore the warning, you or another manager can and should take action. Just make sure the you apply discipline uniformly and it’s not perceived as singling out anyone.

But let’s get to the important part. Did we mention that you’re crazy if you don’t vote for …