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Are your employees social networking or just not working?

18 March 2008

The popularity of social networking sites is a modern day phenomenon: the use of these sites has grown at a huge rate in a relatively short space of time. We look at the problems this can cause in the workplace and what employers can do about it.

The popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Friendster is a modern day phenomenon: the use of these sites has grown at a huge rate in a relatively short space of time. Our main article this month looks at the problems this can cause in the workplace and what employers can do about it.

What are social networking sites?

Social networking sites allow individuals to conduct part of their private life on-line and to post information about themselves (in the form of pictures and text) on the internet.  As work is such a large part of people’s lives it is perhaps not surprising that people will want to discuss it.   The use of sites such as Facebook allows informal communication that would, before the internet, have taken place verbally, without any records being made.  For example, an employee who “lets off steam” to a fellow colleague during a conversation in a pub at the weekend would usually have been safe in the knowledge that such comments would never get back to the employer.  Identical comments written on social networking sites are a very different thing.  They have a permanence that the oral comments do not have, can be stored and searched and have a far greater potential to land the employee in trouble. 

Changing times?

Many employers accept a reasonable amount of personal use of the internet and e-mail by their employees while at work.  It is common to find acceptable use policies (AUP) on internet and e-mail use in employee handbooks.  To a large extent, on line social networking is just one further example of employees accessing a website for personal use and all of the issues that relate more generally to an employee’s internet use continue to apply.  However, the growing popularity of social networking sites presents new management challenges for the employer.  It is not just the amount of time an employee may spend on these sites during working hours distracting them from their work and taking up the employer’s resources that is the issue. 

Because of the nature of social networking sites and regardless of whether staff visit them at home or at work, there are bigger issues around staff conduct, which will also concern HR managers.  For example, could a picture of the individual wearing a uniform which can identify them as an employee of a particular company and which is posted on the internet bring the company into disrepute?  Could text written by the employee about their job indirectly breach client confidentiality?  Could the employer have a duty to take action against an employee who makes derogatory or discriminatory comments about a fellow employee on their blog?

Legal difficulties

Although the law has traditionally lagged behind developments in technology, it is not difficult to see how there might be many different legal aspects which need to be considered in relation to employee use of social networking sites.  The nature of the content on social networking sites is, by definition, very personal.  Therefore, if an employer wishes to monitor content posted by its employees this is likely to contain information regarding the employees’ social lives.  This brings into focus arguments regarding privacy and human rights. 

There has always been a tension between a worker’s expectation of privacy in the workplace and an employer’s need to run its business and protect its interests.  If an employers intends to monitor their employees’ internet and/or e-mail they need to make this clear at the outset, to say what they will be doing and why.  It is also important to stress to employees that they should not expect information that is sent or received using their employer’s equipments to be private.

Recruitment

Another area in which social networking has been seen to impact on work is the reported use of sites by employers to vet candidates for recruitment. This is no doubt a temptation for many managers seeking to appoint staff, but any employer who takes equal opportunities in recruitment seriously should not be considering this. As only a minority of potential staff will have public profiles on social networks, using information from this source can give an unfair advantage or disadvantage to certain candidates.
There is also the danger it may leave the employer open to charges (well founded or not) of discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, sexuality or other criteria, if this information is not given on application forms but can be deduced from a search personal profiles online.

The Acceptable Use Policy

The mere existence of an AUP to provide guidance on employees’ use of email and the internet buried in the staff handbook is not, by itself sufficient.  The AUP needs to be distributed to all staff (perhaps via an intranet) and staff need to be made aware of its contents. One way of continuing to draw it to their attention to it is to remind them by way of an automated “pop-up” that, when they use the company IT system, they are using it in accordance with the AUP.  Most importantly, the AUP should actually be enforced consistently and fairly.

The content of an AUP needs to be tailored to the specific requirements of your organisation.  You may want to have a very liberal approach that allows employees to use the internet with very few restrictions, or alternatively you might wish to set specific times in the day when employees are permitted such usage.  You may also wish to cover social networking sites or remind employees of best practice relating to blogging separately within the AUP or even put in place an individual policy on this. 

As a minimum, any policy should cover:

Summary

  1. Ensure your AUP is regularly reviewed and updated.
  2. Implement appropriate technical solutions to support the AUP.
  3. Ensure that the AUP is linked to your disciplinary procedures and that employees fully understand what is acceptable conduct.
  4. Educate your employees – this is not about “Big Brother” stopping them doing what they want; it is just as much about employee protection.  
  5. Consistent treatment of misconduct is key.
  6. Consider what you are trying to achieve by any monitoring and identify the least intrusive way of achieving that objective.
  7. Keep the method of monitoring / AUP under review and amend to meet new challenges.
  8. Do not leave it all to an external IT supplier; it is the employer who is responsible for their employees.
  9. Consider if you want to include specific guidance on social networking sites and remind employees of issues around confidentiality, defamation and discrimination.

Are any of the issues in this article giving you a headache? If so, we want to know

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Claire Ball

Solicitor
T: 08700 86 8968
I: +44 (0)118 965 8968
E: claire.ball@shoosmiths.co.uk