Whether it be Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or the company blog, employee presence in social media is way, way up, creating risks for employers that are proving difficult to manage without careful planning and appropriate policies.

These risks can take many forms – FTC endorsement issues, inadvertent sharing of confidential company or personal information, harassment claims, blog posts harmful to the company’s reputation – to name a few.  The damage can be done whether the employee is posting at home or during working hours.

This white paper (pdf), which takes into account some of our prior posts, is intended to help employers get a better handle on these issues, particulalry in three area: (1) employees’ misuse of social media; (2) monitoring and regulating employees’ social media use; and (3) basing hiring decisions on information obtained from social media.