Employee Blogs Continued

Following on from our update on 16 June 2007, in which we referred to the four employees who had been sacked for gossiping, articles have recently appeared in the UK press focusing on the Internet “gossip” sites Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

According to the Telegraph newspaper, more than 70% of businesses in the UK have now banned the social networking site Facebook. As a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police commented, “there is no business need for employees to access them [social networking sites]”. Many employers, therefore including the Metropolitan Police, British Gas and Lloyds TSB, have all installed Internet filters to block access to the sites.

In the UK alone, Facebook has an incredible 4 million users and approximately 30 million users worldwide. Employers are now increasingly concerned about the amount of time that employees are spending on such sites and many employers are implementing additional IT policies to make it clear that disciplinary action and potentially dismissal may follow, should employees be found to be accessing these sites during working hours.

Of course, as our previous update highlighted, the amount of time that employees are spending on such sites is not the only concern. An ever increasing number of employees are openly gossiping about their workplaces or colleagues on these sites, exposing themselves to potential disciplinary action or defamation claims as a result. Whilst employees may be aware that their employers are concerned about the amount time that they are spending on these sites, they may not be aware that employers are also concerned about the content of these sites and will take a dim view of any inappropriate comments.

Further, many employers are checking these sites for information about potential employees as a form of pre-screening. Inappropriate photographs and/or comments may in future be relied upon by employers to refuse or withdraw job offers.