So I was at this friendly meeting when one of my dearest friends said: “hey Mary, can my employer dictate my LinkedIn profile?” to be honest, I could not answer her question with certainty at that moment. In short, there is no legal right that says employers can control what their employees are posting on their personal LinkedIn accounts or adding to their profiles. But when you google this question, it seems like there are a lot of people asking the same question. For example, someone on Quora asked if her employer could make her change her LinkedIn profile photo.
Another young boy was asking who actually owns his LinkedIn account since his employer was trying to control what he was posting and what skills he put on top. So many similar examples made me try to answer this question from my point of view, at least as an entrepreneur.
Can my employer dictate my LinkedIn profile?
As I mentioned before, they cannot officially control your virtual activities, but since many of them seem to tend to do it, I am going to talk from both sides.
First of all, you need to know that if HR or your employer is manipulating your profile or activities on LinkedIn, they become liable for your actions and posted content. Yeah, the first law is: if you control it, you own it. So if some of them made you make some changes in your profile photo or even post something that seemed suspicious, they will be held responsible for the content since they own it.
But as an employer, I must say that most of the employers who try to dictate your LinkedIn profile have good intentions. If they are asking you to change your profile photo with a recent photo they took from you in the company, they do not mean any harm, and they just want you to look your best as their employee.
Most of the time when they ask you to reorder your skill section or add or remove one of the featured section things, they mean to represent the company page, products, and services better if possible.
Usually, you are asked to post something special in your LinkedIn feed if that thing is related to the company, a newly launched service, an event, a new product, etc. Remember that you are your company’s ambassadors on LinkedIn; the more professional you look, the better reflection of the company will be. To be honest, now that I’m thinking of it, I wouldn’t mind bringing a professional photographer and asking my employees to add their newly taken professional photos to their LinkedIn profiles.
I do it regularly, you know, since CUF regularly adds to its services, my employees are asked to post about the new products every now and then in their own feed! It became a tradition in my company, you can call it policy.
We have our own CUF company page, of course, but the brand awareness and marketing trick always work much better if different posts get published in some personal accounts about the company’s updates.
Although I cannot do anything if an employee refuses to use the photo he/she is told to or publish the content she is asked to post in their personal account. Their LinkedIn account belongs to them, not the company they are working in.
But I need to repeat this, most of the employers who try to persuade you to make some changes in your profile or try to tell you what to post don’t mean any harm.
They are just thinking about the company’s virtual image and how they can increase the selling rate. As they say, smell the money, we all should.
So next time someone asks you, can my employer dictate my LinkedIn profile, tell them not legally, but they usually just mean to make you look more professional.
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