14 May 2016

Number 1 POLICIES

CONFERENCE CHAMBERS

SOCIAL MEDIA
It feels as though they have been part of our social lives
forever and is hard to imagine a world without them!

THE giants LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

were founded between 2002 and 2006 and yet have revolutionised
how we communicate and interact with those we, amongst other
things, follow or call friends most of whom we have never met, or
whose circulation we simply like. With the rise of social media
comes the need for a new policy to deal with employees use of it,
which employers may find damaging for one reason or another.
Surprisingly, for many organisations a Social Media Policy is still
absent from the staff handbook or it simply does not exist. Or, understandably to some degree, the
policy they do have covers workplace but not personal use. Chances are that employers would
probably need both. Why?
Like
IT is highly unlikely that simply liking a circular that an employer finds unpalatable and
obviously generated originally by another person (not the employee) would land that employee in any
serious trouble let alone dismissal summary or otherwise.
HOWEVER, the position may well be different if such an unpalatabled message had been
written by the employee his/herself who had the message liked beyond their control. Going viral
springs to mind; although we need not go so far (No pun intended!).
Privacy Settings
EVEN with privacy settings on the problem is the employee (author of the original message)
has no control over what the friend or follower does with the message let alone what their
friends/followers do with it. You get the message (Again, no pun intended!).
Clear Policy AN D Damage suffered
FURTHERMORE, it is unlikely to be enough for a message to be unpalatable to an
employer that would justify a related dismissal as being fair. The employer would have to show that it
has a clear policy that covers the act complained of is it a workplace or personal matter or both?
and that the message damages the employer i.e. its reputation or its product or the service it provides.
My advice is to have a Social Media Policy that is relevant to what you want to protect and achieve.

2016 RyanClement

Contact details:
Carole Paterson or Ryan Clement
Conference Chambers
256-260 Field End Road, Eastcote HA4 9LT
Tel: 07956 207893 Fax: 0800 2425323
Carole@ConferenceChambers.com or Ryan@ConferenceChambers. com
www.ConferenceChambers.com