LIVE24SEVEN // Business
Social Media in the workplace
I have yet to come across an employer that hasn’t had some element of difficulty in the workplace following the rise of social media over the last decade.
From Facebook to Snapchat and all the blogs and vlogs in- between, we now live in an age where the younger generation have grown up using these social media tools and therefore, is it fair to punish them for their continued use if this is all they know…not always!
One prime example of this was an enquiry I received recently: “My employee sent his Line Manager a snapchat message confirming he was ill and would not be in work, can I discipline him?” To discipline fairly for this reporting style the employee would have to be in breach of the Company Sickness Absence Procedure. If there is not one in place or it doesn’t specifically state that an employee has to telephone their Line Manager or use specified means of communication, then a snapchat message would constitute notification. In this situation the Policy only stated the employee’s Line Manager must be notified before 08.30am and therefore clear reporting guidelines were not in place for employees to follow.
What to watch out for... ¥ Breach of Company Policy ¥ Confidentiality ¥ Vicarious Liability ¥ Bully & Harassment ¥ Reputational Damage ¥ LinkedIn Ownership ¥ Training ¥ ET Views
Social Media Policy ¥ Who is covered by Policy ¥ Scope and Purpose of Policy ¥ Do's & Dont's ¥ Compliance with related Policies ¥ Personal use of Social Media ¥ Prohibited use ¥ Monitoring ¥ Business Use ¥ Recruitment ¥ Contractual Preventions
Rebecca Hardy Practice Director and Director of Client HR
The problems with personal usage doesn’t stop at loss of productivity and attention to detail, it can include the Employer being vicariously liable for comments made by an employee about another employee online that amount to harassment. To avoid liability, an employer may maintain that the employee was not acting "in the course of employment", but tribunals apply a very wide test to this concept. It is unlikely to be sufficient to defeat the claim by purely stating the offending act took place while an employee was not physically at work or acting under instruction from an employer.
Top Tip: Employers should take all reasonably practicable steps to prevent harassment in or out of the workplace. Appropriate policies and training should therefore clearly indicate to employees that online behaviour at all times should conform to appropriate standards as set out in Bullying & Harassment and/or Equal Opportunities Policies.
LinkedIn is a law unto itself with the problems that are created for employers that encourage its use. The whole nature of LinkedIn is to create a list of an employee's business contacts including, potentially, clients or customers. The question is then, are the details confidential, who do they belong to and what can the employer do to protect such information? Whilst there is still very little case law when it comes to LinkedIn, employers are advised to update post termination restrictions to reference LinkedIn contacts and what employees can and can’t do, together with reviewing contracts of employment to include employee’s responsibilities to return data stored on social media to the employer on termination.
Facebook - Transley v B&Q Employee comment "this place of work is beyond a f**king joke" and that he would soon be "doing some busting". Dismissal was unfair. Unreasonable for the employer to conclude that these comments were a threat to the business, and the relationship between employer and employee was not so damaged that dismissal was necessary.
YouTube - Taylor v Somerfield Stores Ltd 20-second video posted on YouTube by an employee of another employee in uniform being hit over the head with a plastic bag full of other plastic bags in a storeroom. The video received eight hits and the employee took it down, unprompted, after three days.
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