LinkedIn: A Violation of An Employee’s Non-Compete?

Here's one for you:

Employers are being advised to specify (in non-solicitation agreements) that communications made through an online social networking website such as LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. constitute a violation of the employment contract.

Wait, there’s more.

They’re also being advised to include a social media paragraph in non-competes that specifically addresses the use of computers and social media. The paragraph should state, among many other things limiting social media involvement, the following:

The employee is not permitted to have a webpage or website on the Internet for business purposes through a provider without prior written approval from the employer. This includes social networking sites like Linked-In for business purposes. The employee should agree that mentioning his or her affiliation or employment with the employer on these types of sites without prior written approval of the content by the employer is not permitted. If the employee is permitted to connect with clients via LinkedIn, they should be required to set their settings so that other users cannot see their contacts.

Read all the limitations here.

What does this mean for the sourcing industry going forward?

Is this advice, as one alarmed commenter stated, "draconian and ultimately untenable”?

Or is the legal ice thinning for using social media for recruiting?

Comment by Thomas on February 9, 2011 at 11:01am: Thanks Karen Lynn for your thoughts. All very good points and I'm still not sure where I come down on this. I will try to make a case for protecting the "list" and how it is an asset to some types of businesses.

I have an association management background and most of my career was spent in membership orgnaizations that represented particular indusries or sectors. Each of my associations required paid membership and you received a variety of services for this. So, in additin to representatin on legislative and regulatory matters, we provided added value in a variety of ways [one could argue the effacacy of those but that's for a later day].

As you might expect, we had a number of vendors/allied members/etc. who were always interested in getting to the key people in these sectors for product sales and so forth. We did not give them our "list" but allowed them to reach our members through our "relationship" with the member [customer/client/etc.]. Our membership departments and the staff managed these relationships with members, bu the associations paid for their time, training and supervised their performance.

I guess this is what I'm having difficulty with: If my employer pays me, trains me and provides me all of the resources to develop clients and candidates on their behalf, which includes building new relationships or strengthening existing one, how does the employee claim the right to this relationship on an exclusive basis if they leave? I suppose this would be crafted as part of a non-compete of a non solicitation aimed at clients serviced during the time they were employed at the firm.

I know that this whole topic could consume us for months and still not be resolved to all of the contributor's satisfaction.

[P.S. forgive any spelling errors not caught above]