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On-line Social Networking - A Double Edged Sword

10 September 2007

‘Facebook’, the social networking website has hit our shores like a tidal wave and we’re all at risk of being swept up. If you are not on it, you’ve no doubt been invited by someone to join and if you are on it you may even have become over engaged, ‘poking’ friends, searching for long lost schoolmates, or even engaging in on line food fights.

The site provides users with a profile page that can be shared with friends and the outside world, allowing you to publish very personal information about yourself including age, relationship status, religious and political views. Photos of you can be published and posted by others onto your site. Now colleagues and former colleagues are linking up and forming networking groups around the organisations that they work for or used to work for.

For most people facebook is nothing more than harmless fun but whether you are an employer or an employee, you may need to think about how you want to use this site particularly in the context of the working environment. Some organisations actively encourage the use of social networking sites while others have banned the use of facebook in their organisation. Many just leave their employees to get on with it. The ‘right’ approach is not clear cut and is dependant very much on how the site is being used by the people on it.

If you are an employer, there are a few issues which could concern you one of the most obvious being the misuse of working time by employees, some of whom spend several hours a day on the site. In response some large employers including the Kent County Council have banned employees from using it. Further issues which have arisen with the use of such websites is the potential for bullying amongst colleagues and the undermining and poor representation of the organisation they work for. Recently it was reported that university students had set up a social networking site on facebook which was aimed at targeting and bullying a librarian on their campus. It was called for “those who hate the little fat library man." Photos of the man, which had been taken on a mobile phone, were posted on the site. The site had been running for several months before the university found out.

Irrespective of who you are, you may in particular want to think about the information that you publish on your own profile page. Unless you alter your privacy settings on facebook, anyone, including your boss, could look at your site and this could cause difficulties if you criticise or undermine the organisation you work for. In August 2007, it was reported that an employee of Argos was sacked for sending out an information blog on facebook that read ‘ I work at Argos and I want to leave because it is s**t.’

For employers, legitimate concerns have arisen as to the use of employee internet blogs and the reputation of their organisation. Earlier this year it was reported that an employee was dismissed after her Paris-based employer objected to her personal internet blog which contained comments on her professional life on an internet diary and was dismissed for ‘bringing the company into disrepute’ although she did not actually mention the name of the employer. She succeeded in her unfair dismissal claim but in light of the circumstances employers have been advised to amend their policies to cover internet blogging and to warn employees that misuse could result in disciplinary action.

For more information please contact Amanda Okill, Solicitor.
 

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