Help employees locate vaccines.

Many employers provide free or discounted flu shots on-site through their health plan — but the attention H1N1 has gotten has lead to vaccine shortages in many areas, leaving companies empty handed.

But HR can still direct people to the most convenient places to get vaccines. And now that’s even easier with the new flu shot finder tool from Google Maps.

Just enter an address or zip code and the finder will locate places offering flu shots in the area, distinguising which are carrying only the regular flu shot and which have the H1N1 vaccine. The list isn’t definitive or official — some locations may not show up on the map, and those displayed could be out of the vaccine, so employees should call ahead.

Many employees run quick background checks on candidates by searching for their blogs and social networking profiles. It’s a strategy that can help the hiring process — if it’s done the right way to avoid legal troubles.

Here are the top four ways Googling applicants can lead to legal trouble, according to attorney Joseph Beachboard, speaking at the recent Society for Human Resources Management Annual Conference in New Orleans:

1. Caregiver or disability bias – Hiring managers may find information on social networking sites that they would never ask about in an interview — for example, pictures of a female candidate with her young children, or details about the applicant’s struggle with a disability. Even though managers may not think about discriminating against working mothers or people with disabilities, if they know that information and turn the person down, the applicant could have ammo for a lawsuit.
2. Privacy violations – A lot of what applicants put online is public. But not everything, and accessing things that are deemed private could get managers in trouble. In one recent case, a group of employees were members of a private, password-protected group on MySpace where they often complained about work. A manager wrangled the password out of a worker, went to the site and fired the creators of the group for “unprofessionalism.” The employees sued, claiming the company had no right to see their private site. A jury agreed and awarded the employees $17,000 in back pay and damages.
3. Legal, after hours activities – Several states prohibit employees from denying a job to someone based on their legal, non-work activities. That may include things like chugging booze — though if you can show a connection between the behavior and an inability to do the job, you’re usually OK. But other activities might show up — for example, political protests or union activities — that are more clearly off limits for hiring decisions.
4. Fair Credit Reporting Act – If you use a third party service to conduct certain types of background checks, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires that you give the applicant prior notice. In some states, such as California, you have to give notification even if you’re doing the check yourself. Does that including checking out someone’s Facebook profile?. Experts don’t know for sure, and probably won’t until a test case is brought to court.

If your managers do Google applicants, what’s the best way to proceed? The biggest key, Beachboard says, is focusing on job-related information only. Give managers a list of what they might look for and tell them to only record information that can legally be used in the hiring process.

“Please list any and all current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.”

Translation: If there are any embarrassing details about you on the Internet, we want to see the stuff.

Alas, the city’s leap into the Digital Age was not to be. When word of the new employment requirement got around, Bozeman officials took all sorts of flak for “trampling civil liberties” and “snooping on citizens.” Residents, the American Civil Liberties Union and a few outraged politicians got into the act.

A few days later, an embarrassed City Commission chopped the policy, saying, “We apologize for wandering down a road that violated basic rights of our citizens.”

The obvious moral of the story: Employers who ask for private Web info are also asking for trouble.

Take Google, for instance. The so-called dream employer ended up with a public-relations nightmare and a lot of angry employees when it nearly doubled the employees’ share of what had been  reasonably priced, company-sponsored daycare.

You probably don’t get the kind of publicity that Google does. Few of us do. But everyone has employees — who get angry when perks are pulled.

Still, sometimes cutting or changing a benefit is unavoidable. A survey last year by Towers Perrin showed that 11% of publicly traded companies said they had cut at least one benefit. The most common ones to fall under the ax were company cars, club memberships, life and health insurance packages, and financial-planning services.

So, what do you do
So, again, consider what employee reaction will be if someday you have to take away or change a benefit that seems reasonable and do-able today. And how will you get employees to swallow the idea?

Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania recommends:

• Make it fair and across-the-board. If some employees — usually higher level ones — get to retain the benefit, expect the move to lead to anger and poor performance among employees who lose the benefit. Worse, if you try to keep it a secret, expect a full-scale employee revolt.
• Make it equitable. The Google case is a good example. By drastically raising the employees’ share for daycare, the company sent off signals that the benefit was being made accessible only to higher-paid people. That’s when things got ugly for the once-admired employer.
• Give the reason — other than “to save money.” It’s not that saving money is an evil goal. It’s that when employees perceive it as the only goal, they rebel. If, for example, you’re pulling one benefit to make sure employees get to keep a another higher-priority benefit, say so. If it’s to keep wages at high level, mention that. Whatever it is, the reason should be tied to what’s best for the employees, and not just to what’s best for the company’s bottom line.

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.”