new employee keeps tagging the company in negative social media posts

A reader writes:

My company recently hired a new employee who has been a problem. We were hesitant to hire her to begin with — she didn’t have glowing recommendations and she’s got a patchy work history, but she has experience in the one thing we can’t train on right now, so we hired her reluctantly. It turns out she’s an over-sharer on social media: Every single detail of her day is listed in a giant personal social media post at least three or four times a day, and she tags everyone she comes in contact with: businesses, products, people. It’s unusual.

She has been very opinionated about how we do things and doesn’t really want to participate in feedback or training. She goes home every day and writes a long, detailed post about who she interacted with, what she did all day, and her opinions about it and then tags her coworkers and our company. It’s borderline negative/critical of the company but really reflects more on her as a person and less on how we do things. I’m not sure if she realizes how it looks or if she’s just an over-sharer.

We have a pretty straightforward social media policy: don’t tag us, don’t list us as your place of work, and don’t friend or interact with your managers on social media. We were clear on this policy when she was hired. I reminded her of the policy, and then I ended up tagged in one of her long, daily, detailed posts.

HR then reminded her of the policy and not to tag or mention our company by name and to appropriately address needs, questions, and conflicts through the right channels. She then complained about that, with direct tags, on social media.

Other than this glaring issue, the quality of her work is okay. It’s not stellar, and it’s not bad. But her attitude is a mess.

I’m not sure if she’s a bad fit or if we need to give her more time. Her 30-day review is due next week. Would I be wrong to let her go and wish her well? I don’t want to put someone out of work if we don’t have to, but we have a great and positive team and wonderful rapport with customers that I don’t want to jeopardize.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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