Previously, attorney Brian G. Cesaratto outlined the four things you should do immediately if you suspect an employee may be trying to steal or sabotage company computer files. Now, you are ready to begin the investigation. And we pick up where the story left off . . .

You call back the head of product development. You advise her that the necessary policies are in place to conduct a full investigation of the engineer’s computer. Given the stakes involved, you decide to move forward over the weekend by having an expert come in and make a mirror image of the engineer’s computer. Doing so allows the investigation to proceed without alerting the engineer that he is under suspicion and risking the destruction of evidence that you may need later ― either for use in implementing discipline or in court. read more…

What should you do when you suspect an employee with access to sensitive and important computer files has become disgruntled and may have malicious plans (information theft, system sabotage)? In the first post of two, attorney Brian G. Cesaratto sets the scene, outlines some of the forensic concerns, and tells you the four things you must do immediately.

The head of product development telephones you late one Friday afternoon to tell you she believes one of the engineers on her team is leaving. She has a strong suspicion that he may be stealing highly sensitive company files and information. She explains that the engineer, who is working on a high-priority new product, may be looking to leave because of a poor performance review weeks earlier that resulted in him not receiving a pay increase for the coming year. There have been significant issues with his performance and attitude toward work since then.

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In the “Paul’s Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook (A Cautionary Tale)” series of articles, HR practitioner Paul Knoch wrote about his initial success using Facebook as an HR tool, which ended abruptly and then began again but on uncertain terms. Recently, Paul was able to notch one up in the “Love” column because posting on Facebook allowed him to stay in contact with employees during the tsunami scare (Paul works at a conference center in Cannon Beach on Oregon’s coast).

Luckily, Paul’s employer and employees came through it all unharmed, but for 18 hours, the area was under a tsunami warning (the most serious of the four levels of advisories).  During that time, residents were told to leave their homes around 3 a.m. and weren’t given the OK to return until 9 hours later — at which time Paul had conference center full of customers who needed service from employees operating on little to no sleep. Through all of this, Paul was able to go to one place to keep employees in the loop. As he explained it, “without [Facebook] it would have been much more difficult to communicate so quickly during an ongoing, evolving situation.”

Here are five insights from Paul on how Facebook proved to be an essential HR tool for him during the tsunami scare: read more…

A week ago today, Steven Slater rode a JetBlue emergency exit slide from obscurity as another abused flight attendant into the infamy of being a “working class hero.” His grand gesture made the story an overnight Internet sensation. Less than 24 hours after he took to the plane’s intercom to tell off rude passengers, it seems like every major media outlet was telling the world about it . Less than 48 hours after the incident, JetBlue responded to the incident on its corporate blog Blue Tales. If you’ve ever wondered how you might handle an embarrassing public scandal using your social media tools, the Blue Tales blog post “Sometimes the news is about us” offers some good insights.

First, the headline let’s us know that despite having its name attached with a rather embarrassing incident, JetBlue bloggers (and thus, the corporation they represent) have a sense of humor about the whole thing. After all, it’s the humorous aspect of Slater’s actions that garnered so much attention in the first place. If he had quietly taken his bag and exited through a normal route, the general public most probably would have never heard about JetBlue Flight 1052 out of Pittsburgh. The post gives a further nod to the “absurdity” of the situation in the first few sentences and even gives a link to CNN’s coverage of the “little story” about Slater. Later, the post references the ultimate disgruntled worker movie Office Space.

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