I was sitting by my usual lunch space at the restaurant thinking about an engagement contract that I was reviewing and writing and suddenly the thought of social media and it's impact on work engagement dawned upon me. Hence this article...
(Don't worry, I know I owe part 2 of the RM0.00 article!)
In today's world (written on 2025), our everyday lives have been, in one way or another influenced and intermingled with social media. From the point a person wakes up, and even past bedtime, the information world continues to evolve. It can be text, a picture, or simple expression that stays imprinted in the digital world and continues to propogate to people that we know, and those we don't.
Open anyone's social media, most likely you'd find posting about them. In more "personal" spaces like Facebook, you'd see announcements or activities of personal life as well as work related matters. Companies have jumped into the bandwagon of social media as a promotion and marketing avenue, but some have spread more across other reasons. This creates an interesting conundrum on "regulating" social media use through internal policies. But often than not, those policies are skewed towards corporate needs rather than an individual.
With the rise of influencer gig on social media, everyone is aiming to be a star in their own right. Hence the notion of who owns social media account comes into question.
I'll give an example. For a theoretical country called Kandaxtan, you have a Prime Minister. This person is elected tbrough election as per X number of years and may change. The country wants to have an account for the PM to make announcements. However, most PM candidates already has their own account which they use to promote their parties/idealogies. We'll leave it at this and come back to this scenario later.
We can broadly categorise social media into 2 simple categories for the sake of this article (there's more, I know). First category being private, or for personal use, which has contents mostly related to personal life, friends and family as primary content focus. The second, being a professional network that is focused on career and work, akin to a job hunting site or LinkedIn. You have posting about job, experience, and even at times promotion about whats happening at work being posted in professional networks.
There are a few scenarios I'd like to explore and hopefully raise some questions.
- The company is launching a new product and wants the staff to help promote in their own social media. COmpany makes it mandatory and (indirectly threatens) implies that their performance will be affected if they do not help promote.
Here, there are no clear line of demarcation of what a person can/cannot do, due to corporate compulsion. The only binding document you have is the employment contract which will point to a set of policy documents internally which may (if you are lucky) have some guidance to social media usage. Can a company compel a staff to use their own account (be it personal or professional) to post company related accounts?
- A company, as part of onboarding exercise requires the job applicant to divulge all social media accounts as part job application/acceptance.
So, are social media accounts private, or public? I may have a public social media account, but IMO its up to the owner to decide to divulge or not. Again, the question of ownership and rights arise. This may lead to individuals having to accept invites from peers as part of "due diligence" if for some reason their profile is private.
- A company suspects a person is receiving kickbacks and decides to perform a lifestyle audit internally. The internal auditor decides to scrutinise the suspect's social media for evidence of lavish lifestyle to ascertain potential violation.
This isn't new and is used by law enforcement and even large organizations. At times, the information leakage comes directly from a person you know who is happy to trade your post details for pennies. (Lesson here: Know who your real friends are).
These limited number of scenarios highlight how some social media contents have been (ab)used.
We go back to being an influencer, or a well known figure. The current job market sees many, if not most, change jobs frequently for better pastures. As such, professional social media such as LinkedIn, while has details of the company which the person has worked before, will also have advertisement and promotions. If a company were to do this professionally, you'd have to pay an advert agency to make it viral. At the end, personal brand building becomes null as your profile becomes a cesspool of advertising and promotions, without the ability of showcasing individual talent and capabilities. This becomes counterproductive and as an individual who owns the professional social media account, the value diminishes. A pointback to the Kandaxstan issue.
(Why do you think organizations force their staff to post? For organic engagement!)
On the flipside, human being humans on social media, literally spills everything. This includes ownself blurring the line between whats private and work by posting work related matters on personal social media space. In these cases. then one's social media presence is ripe for corporate abuse.
The alternative is to have a profile on the social media dedicated specifically for work related matters. Segregation and separation. It most likely has network from the same organization and not individual, and may even use corporate email as the signon ID. Posting happens when there is a corporate need. Example, I may have "Suresh Ramasamy" as my own brand account while I have "SR @ Work" as my current work profile. This way, I still post about corporate stuff (which may be required for my work) without affecting my personal branding
But how to make this work?
The first point of inflection that needs to be addressed is in your employment contract. Unfortunately most people, who are eager to change jobs, would blindly accept the offer letter and sign off the employment contract without carefully reviewing the contents. I bet you wont even know what the corporate policies are (which you will be bound to) once you join work (while HR will tell you, its YOUR job to know what the policies are).
Having a clear set of legal requirements on social media in the employment contract is the first step.
Example verbiage
The staff maintains an independent professional practice and
public presense, including social media platforms. The staff
reserves the right to manage their own social media content and
profile without displaying any affiliations with or endorsement
by, the Company, without any impact to performance of work. If
required, the staff reserves the right to create a separate
account specifically for the purpose of work related content
This is just one statement, and I'm sure by now you'd have ideas as to what else that should be part of this contract statement. I'd love to hear from you, on what else you think should be part of this requirement? Do you have a sample contract clause specifically for this issue?
Author: ORCID ID - Suresh Ramasamy: 0000-0003-4562-037X
This article is mirrored in Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/work-vs-private-life-part-1-social-media-ts-dr-suresh-cvzhc