WHO OWNS LINKEDIN PROFESSIONAL

WHO OWNS LINKEDIN PROFESSIONAL

It’s important to remember that there should be a balance of rights between employers and employees (a little reciprocal respect goes a long way) so that the various platforms can be used in such a way that they benefit both parties.įor more information, contact or visit You can also follow FinCommunications on Facebook.Love ’em or hate ’em, recruiters and vendors need to get used to the reality that Microsoft now owns the two most popular professional networking sites on the net. It’s a jungle out there, and lawyers across the globe are struggling to decipher how the law relates to social media. To avoid litigation, we’d advise ongoing director/marketing/sales meetings in which new business is discussed and contact details are transferred into the company’s CRM system on a weekly/monthly basis. In the United States, many lawsuits have been filed by companies seeking to maintain ownership of LinkedIn profiles – the costs of which have surely outweighed the value of the contacts. Where do the company’s rights begin and end with regards to data ownership? Worse, still, are Farmville credits ceded to the company upon resignation? If a company’s social media policy does stipulate that employees’ LinkedIn profiles belong to the company, what about all their other social media pages, including Facebook and Twitter?

This is not necessarily a bad thing: studies show that if a client or potential client becomes a real-life friend, you’re far more likely to maintain or win their business. Love it or loathe it, social media blurs the divide between personal and professional communication.

Personal and professional communication on LinkedIn If potential clients have ‘linked’ to a person, they do so out of choice and respect for the person (and not the company) and may well not want their details transferred to the company when their ‘connection’ resigns. To make things even more complicated, social media policies can contravene POPI – the legislation designed to protect all personal information and prevent identity theft. These Ts and Cs can, however, be overruled by a company social media policy if it’s incorporated into the employment contract. The terms and conditions of LinkedIn’s own user agreement state that the individual owns the profile and that a company cannot force an employee to hand over their details when they resign. Most employees feel entitled to use their hard-earned knowledge and contacts when embarking on new ventures – and with good reason. If an employee decides to start his/her own business (in the process of changing employment status on LinkedIn), how can the company prevent potentially lucrative clients from making use of the new business? It’s hard enough enforcing the restraint of trade agreements with existing clients.Ĭompany ownership of LinkedIn profiles makes perfect sense from an employer’s point of view, but it’s not likely to sit well with employees who’ve spent a considerable amount of time and effort (not to mention money – premium memberships aren’t cheap) to build up networks of quality connections. Having all these decentralised LinkedIn databases makes enforcing the restraint of trade agreements tricky, to say the least. Restraint of trade enforcement on LinkedIn The problem from a company’s point of view is that employees do not typically transfer the potential clients’ details into the company’s CRM system. That’s all been thrown out the window now, as we all build up our own LinkedIn databases from a combination of friends, colleagues, clients and – very importantly – potential clients. In the good old days, one of the golden rules of marketing was to have a centralised company database that was – ideally – managed and updated by only one person.

Who owns linkedin