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The days of alcohol as a common ingredient of company parties is long over. Drunk driving has become a major social issue and, to a great degree, has been successfully addressed. Liability is now a more conscious element in all the decisions and actions taken by individuals, companies, organizations, etc.

Some employers have had parties at restaurants or hotels, thinking that that strategy limits liability. That might be false protection because the employer invited employees and guests to the venue and offered them alcohol.

According to one expert, the best strategy is to serve no alcohol. The only other reasonable alternative is to hire a bartending service, which has a high amount of liquor liability insurance and is certified by the state.

It’s not uncommon for many companies to implement a policy that forbids managers and supervisors to provide employees leaving the company with references. Legal counsel often drives this policy, since part of their responsibility is to protect the company.

This puts many former employees in a difficult situation. The best of them can’t use glowing references to secure the best possible new jobs. Those with a few employment “flaws” could use good references to overcome any negatives, and be more easily hired.

With the advent of social media, however, former employees are able to provide those hiring with some positive information.

Linkedin, the professional social networking site, seems to be fulfilling this role. Former employees can use the site to gather references from co-workers and even clients of their former companies. Those looking for work may also find information about the companies they are considering through the comments of workers who have left those companies.

A social-medial savvy hiring manager will also use Linkedin to communicate with the co-workers of potential new employees to learn more about them. This resource could become part of a company’s hiring process, so a hiring manager can be even surer about his or her hiring recommendations.

As with most cultural phenomenon, social media has grown much faster than companies’ policies about the use of those media in the workplace.

Many companies still maintain that social media use reduces productivity, jeopardizes the security of the company’s computer systems, makes proprietary information more vulnerable and chokes the bandwidth of the company’s Internet connection.

These are obviously not the fears of the U.S. Department of Defense—and its three million employees must be very productive and highly secure and invulnerable. The new policy it put into effect during March 2010 embraces the value of social media. All DoD employees have permission to be active on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and forums.

A Pentagon official involved in the social media policy said, “It’s not about controlling the message. It’s about giving people as much information, resources and facts as possible.”

According to one social media expert, as much as 25% of U.S. companies forbid their employees to use social media in the workplace, so the Department of Defense’s forward-thinking policy is a surprise to many.

The same expert thinks that companies should learn to trust their employees more when it comes to social media. Employers must realize that social media is a mainstream communication tool.

The expert also advised employees that work for companies that don’t allow social media use in the workplace to look for new jobs at companies that do, since any company that is not using social media as a sales and marketing tool is destined to fail in a few years.

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