At Domo we are in the midst of a social experiment. I mean really a true “social” networking experiment. Our staff is trying out just about every type of social tool out there from likes of TweetDeck to Codecademy. It’s actually pretty interesting to see that our admin assistants are way more “social” than our execs…I’ll chalk that up to a generational thing. It’s fun to see the stats displayed on the monitors through out the work space and see first hand that our social intelligence has increased. Personally, I don’t care about my Klout score but I was stoked when I became the Mayor of my office.

You would think that all this social interaction would get HR folks giddy with joy — but not so much. There is some real terror in the hearts of HR professionals that have historically worked hard to help employees keep work and personal stuff separate for some obvious reasons like protection of privacy, potential discrimination, knowledge of physical or mental health challenges.

The new world order where free sharing of information is common place dramatically changes everything we currently know about employee protection of privacy. There are not yet regulations, or enough established best practices, to address the yet undiscovered territory where college spring break acquaintances that have commemorated their exploits in a wet t-shirt contest on YouTube suddenly find themselves as cubicle next door neighbors. You get it…the whole org can see for themselves via the linked videos to their public Facebook page. Does this constitute a hostile work environment, just because co-workers know it’s there? I’m sure some ambulance chaser out there would try to make a case of it.

So, HR folks we know this train has left the proverbial station, we better get on-board and embrace that fact that the holy grail of employee privacy has been eternally altered. Might be a good idea to get your kids to show you how to find a good photo to share this on Instagram. I’m gonna ask my admin.