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The huge growth in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc in recent years, has brought with it a host of new issues for employers to deal with. The largest such network, Facebook, has over 175 million users, many of whom may be creating all kinds of problems for their employers, who remain blissfully unaware.
Used carefully, these sites can be powerful marketing tools for your organisation. However dangers can occur when users attempt to mix their private life and business profiles. Many younger employees in particular regard social networking sites as a way they of keeping in touch with their friends during the week.
So what sort of problems can occur?
There is an obvious threat to productivity if employees spend time on social networking sites when they should be working. If you are the owner of a business and the user of the social networking site, things are straightforward because you can control what you reveal on your profile, who can see it and whom you accept as “friends”. However, things can get complicated when your employees are the users. There are plenty of examples of how the use of social networking sites can cause a problem for employers, however, the most notorious ones are:
Bringing the organisation into disrepute
Imagine an employee posting a blog in which he discusses your organisation’s affairs and comments upon its customers in a derogatory way; or an employee posting a picture on his Facebook profile of himself being intoxicated and wearing the work uniform. Such situations can give rise to confidentiality and data protection issues and, of course, have severe consequences for your relationship with your clients.
Discrimination
Consider the example of an employee posting a comment on a work colleague’s profile or a picture on their profile, which hints in an offensive way at their sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. Acts carried out by an employee can, in certain circumstances, be treated as carried out the employer; so, to avoid or at least limit their liability, employers must ensure that they take action as soon as they become aware of such an incident.
Employers should also be aware of the risk of discrimination when using Facebook to research candidates as part of the recruitment process.
Health and safety issues
Most of us have used YouTube in the past. Imagine browsing this website and coming across a film portraying your cleaning staff in their work uniforms performing stunts including e.g. “skiing” on the cleaning mops. While a lot of people will probably find it amusing, you might find yourself being investigated by the Health and Safety authority on the basis of a breach of the health and safety legislation.
So what is the solution?
You might feel that it’s hard to control what your employees are doing during office hours, not to mention their activities outside of work. You can, however, take some practical steps to ensure that your employees are aware of what is expected of them when it comes to their online behaviour:
- Consider whether access to the social networking sites is desirable within your organisation. If it is, decide whether it should be restricted and if so in what way (specific times during the day, amount of time, particular websites).
- Update your internal polices, employees handbooks and contracts of employment to reflect the rules in respect of the social networking sites. Make sure that your employees know exactly when and how they can use the sites and that the misuse of social neworking sites can amount to gross misconduct.
- Educate your staff about the dangers of the misuse of social networking sites. Ask them to think carefully about what they put up on their online profiles and who can see them; and point out to them that it might be desirable to look into their privacy settings and make their profiles private
- Monitor the situation and tell your staff about the fact that you do monitor. Explain the reasons for such monitoring; and make the monitoring as non-intrusive as possible
By ensuring that you have up-to-date policies and procedures which are communicated to your workforce, you can help ensure that you protect the good name of your organisation whilst taking full advantage of the online networking possibilities.
For help with any of the issues raised within this article, contact Simon King on 01827 317071 or sking@pickerings-solicitors.com.
