Click or quit?
We post statuses, tweet some gossips, email stuffs or
comment in extremes. Lots of the same thing that we keep ourselves busy about.
And at some point, it even affects us real time. Say, if all these net
activities will be taken away for one day, we’ll definitely run amok. That
somehow made us a bit attached or even dependent to this so-called Social
Networks. Our lives are way changed from the usual primitive non-virtual
communications wherein people get content with snail mails or even travel hard
just to see loved ones. People’s lives are becoming easy, convenient and virtual.
And we can call this life we have now as virtually inspired ones.
Let’s think complex.
How about if we complicate things and coincide this Social
Network into every aspects of our lives? Say, getting this virtual behavior of
ours as a determining aspect of our careers in life. And that before us being
hired or so, we should first disclose identities used in our Social networking
sites, attached on our CV (Curriculum Vitae) and be judged accordingly. And
even more, by making use of our Social Network behavior as the basis for our
continuing fitness in our choice of employment. Let us crack that idea and put
it in context. What will be our say when all these scenarios are brought into
our land?
We have to delineate.
Our works/careers in whatever fields it might be should
all come as one aspect of our living life. And our personal lives, in whatever
ways and means of dealing the same should also be in another aspect thereof.
Simply put, they are of two different animals. Once you commingle the same, you
end up misunderstanding things as is.
Our personal lives, which involve how we interact with
loved ones, communicate or reach out to them, are not the same as before. Now,
we used a lot of means to do those things since places and locations are
becoming borderless and that some of us go abroad and seek greener pastures or
some of us, separate lives and seek new ones, but really have to connect again
whatever means possible. Technology made all these things possible through
Social Networks via internet. We have Skype, Yahoo, Gmails, Twitter, Myspace,
or even the ever controversial Facebook; and everybody connects. But alongside
these trending changes as to our communications and interactions lie some basic
miscommunications and misunderstandings, which are, naturally normal, like
talking and conversing humans, face-to-face. What just happen now is the
leveling up of our ways and means of our interactions to others, close or
stranger, friends or unfriended people. We stretch extra miles and adapt
internet and its underlying Social Networks which undoubtedly offer big time
packages and dozens of happiness to us. But still, it remains to be private in
a sense that it belongs to the aspect of our personal lives, just an upgraded
ones.
Contrariwise, there lies our career lives. This is another
aspect of our life that we really be serious about. Just to take note of the
things that our work/career is capable of bringing us like, finances, support
and stability. These stuffs deserve to be preserved and worked on as hard as
possible with. Our employer is our boss and the Company policy is our law, this
is elementary. We work as mandated of us, considering the dos and don’ts of employment
per se. We get paid accordingly. And we’ll be bringing extra happiness to our
families and friends alike since we have the money that we knuckled down
through our work. And what is next is all fun. We celebrate, real hard and
capture photos harder. And we let our friends and families know how happy we are
and post albums on Facebook. This is the usual trend of today. We let people
know what happened to us, either good or bad. Since these Social networks like
Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and lots of the same cloth alongside people’s
activities to all its applications and freebies are so commonplace. No age
limitations, or career restrictions, children and adults alike do the same
thing on a daily basis. They communicate online, chat online, post comments and
photos side by side, check whose online, busy, away or idle, things like these
are usually done in private. And all these pertain to that so-called virtual
behavior.
And what is the catch? You’ll simply get fired when your
virtual behavior run afoul to that of the Company’s or Employer’s. Or worse,
you will not be admitted for work if your virtual behavior goes poles apart
from that of the Company’s.
We have to settle this.
The company has its own rules and regulations, policy and
mandates in regulating and maintaining employees, that is a fact. But to what
extent are all these mandates apply? This basically applies to whatever
work-related matters within the working environment or workplace. Problems,
differences and inequities within the scope of the working environment can best
be settled likewise within management and employees accordingly. All this
rooted from issues that are work-related per se. However, there are instances
that employers delve deeper into the matter and resolve conflicts in relation
to employees’ virtual behavior. They basically do so for lack of things visible
within the four corners of working place to be used against employees in
dealing with conflicts and resolving the same. Like in hiring, CVs are normal,
but some employers really required your log-in passwords to Social Network
sites of your choice and that you are active about and based everything with
that. And when you are a bona fide employee already and encountered something
heightened conflict without much basis for you to get fired, employers go
leaked on your Social network activities and find loopholes provided therein.
What companies and employers do is this: when all things fail and you have
to do it still, go trawling the internet.
Are they overdoing things? Yes, they are.
As what we have established above, both the career and
personal aspects of everybody’s life go different path and hence, not to be
taken in the same way. Both are in isolation to each other. You have your own
personal life before you have your career life, or in rare case, otherwise.
Your career life has its own scope and extent which is not in any way
coinciding with your personal life. Mixing it up is a no-no since it is
elementary to separate your personal lives to your work, just to make things
objective. Employees can do this segregation as much as possible since too much
stress in work when added to such stress in personal life, might be that
morbid. And how about employers and company you are working with? You don’t
have that control. Maybe yes, maybe no. But what is for our concern is the
former. They do things as described above. And what will be your recourse? Back
off.
This is
hitting below the belt already. You are not working just to be peeped at personally.
True enough, that you are to be monitored or supervised by bosses or immediate
supervisors alike. But this has limitations, which has something to do with work-related
matters ONLY. Matters like how you looked like in your DP in Facebook, how
you managed to comment back, how you posted statuses, tweeted, or how you write
on your blog are just some of the things that remained to be your private
matters. These have nothing to do with the way you sailed on your choice of
career. And by so considering the same is in no way appropriate to be claimed
as management prerogative since the latter refers to rights
of an employer to regulate all aspects of employment, such as the freedom to
prescribe work assignments, working methods, processes to be followed,
regulation regarding transfer of employees, supervision of their work, lay-off
and discipline, and dismissal and recall of workers. (Baybay Water District
vs. COA 2002).[1]
Basically, referring working performance and decisions to social network
activities and behavior is highly flawed, much more a violation.
When we look closer into the matter, we
initially grasp the existence of power play. The management as the more
superior entity should not overpower labor (employees) all because of the
latter’s vulnerability. What else can an ordinary employee or even aspirant to
be an employee do, but to succumb to such requirement of giving access to
social network sites that they are active about and attached therewith to CVs
when applying or be basis for continued fitness in the company, all because
they want the job or want to eke out a living. This should not be the
practice. Ethically, morally and legally, this added requirement of companies
and employers alike is a concrete violation therefore.
What has been violated? It
is the Right to privacy of employees. Although we might not have a
specific law on Privacy matters, we have some provisions that will not let
those invaders to privacy scot-free. We have in our New Civil Code, which
provides that:
Art. 26. Every person shall respect
the dignity, personality, privacy and peace of mind of his neighbors and other
persons. The following and similar acts, though they may not constitute a
criminal offense, shall produce a cause of action for damages, prevention
and other relief:
(1) Prying into the privacy of
another's residence:
(2) Meddling with or disturbing
the private life or family relations of another;
(3) Intriguing to cause another to
be alienated from his friends;
(4) Vexing or humiliating another
on account of his religious beliefs, lowly station in life, place of birth,
physical defect, or other personal condition.
This is in relation to one of the Rights of
every person under our Constitution, particularly, Article 3 (Bill of Rights),
Section 3 which says that:
Sec.
3. (1) The
privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except upon
lawful order of the court, or when public safety or order requires otherwise as
prescribed by law. (2) Any evidence obtained in violation of this or the
preceding section shall be inadmissible for any purpose in any proceedings.
The
inviolability of privacy as to communication and correspondence which include
some of our ways and means of reaching out to others with the use of internet,
like emails, blogs and the like, has to be preserved unless there is this lawful
order of the court or when public safety or order requires the same. Absent
the two exceptions would leave our right to such privacy as firm as possible. This
guaranty under our Constitution can also be correlated to our Electronic
Commerce Act, particularly Section 31 which provides as follows:
Section 31. Lawful Access. – Access to an electronic file, or
an electronic signature of an electronic data message or electronic document
shall only be authorized and enforced in favor of the individual or entity
having a legal right to the possession or the use of plaintext, electronic
signature or file or solely for the authorized purposes. The electronic key for
identity or integrity shall not be made available to any person or party
without the consent of the individual or entity in lawful possession of
that electronic key
Hence,
these electronic documents or messages in matters which are presumed to be private
should neither be accessed nor possessed to any other means aside from the ones
authorized by the lawful possessor of the same. Employees in possession of
those electronic documents or messages like emails or the like have the sole
authority to take hold of the same and can only consent of its access
wholeheartedly and not vitiated by any unreasonable power play by employers.
Hence
further, in order for us to put everything squarely, let’s do the basic
principle of all time, Respect each other’s rights. The employees should
respect the policy and mandates that the Management reasonably imposed and
likewise the Management must also see to it that it will respect the rights of
employees alike. When any of them goes overboard, the corresponding law
regarding such should be applied accordingly.
To sum it up, we should always be reminded
that we are in a democratic country and for us to live up to that spirit (that
is, if we still have it), let everybody, without discrimination and preference;
be accorded with the right to express themselves and so as the right to be
protected in doing the same appropriately. The latter right guaranteed to every
person amounts to their right to privacy which is considered as the Mother
of all Rights which ought to be respected. Whatever things considered
private, should remain to be private, and whatever it is that is considered
public, should likewise be public in the eyes of every persons alike. Think
this way and we would not have that problem in the future.
