We get asked this all the time. Although from a legal standpoint you probably can fire someone on Twitter (or other social media), that doesn’t mean you should.
Terminating an employee via Twitter is technically legal in states where employment is defined as “at will.” When at-will labor law applies, you can terminate a worker at any time, for any legal reason, with or without notice and without defining a specific cause. The definition of “legal reason” would exclude firing someone for discriminatory reasons, but that’s about it.
Twitter might also be a practical solution if you have absolutely no other way to contact the employee.
Nonetheless, we don’t recommend it. Overall, it's not okay to fire someone publicly (on social media or otherwise) or to fire someone remotely, unless you have no choice. Despite having helped employers with thousands of terminations, our HR Outsourcing team haven’t ever advised a client to terminate an employee publicly, for a variety of reasons:
We have two simple rules of thumb for how to terminate someone. First, make sure the person being terminated is not surprised by the conversation. A surprised person often becomes an angry and vindictive person.
Second, be kind and empathetic. Losing a job is traumatic for most people, and you don’t want to make a difficult situation even worse. Need some expert help with HR matters? Our HR Outsourcing team offers high-level advisory and consultative support for businesses.
December 09, 2020