Do Your Employees Twitter?

Focus:	More and more employers are introducing social media policies so that the expectations of both employer and employee are clear.
Services:	Employee & Industrial Relations
Industry Focus:	Consumer Goods, Franchising, Financial Services, Government, Medical & Pharmaceutical, Property, Insurance
Date:	17 May 2010
Author:	Angus Macinnis, John Oakes

So there you are at the Logies, Twittering away, and the next thing you know, you are out of a job. That was what happened to Catherine Deveny, now a former columnist for The Age in Melbourne recently. The editor of The Age decided that some comments which Ms Deveny had posted on her personal Twitter feed “were not in keeping with the standards we set at The Age”, with the result that Ms Deveny would no longer write for the paper.

Twitter (and other Internet social media sites) raise a thorny issue for employers. It is one thing for employers to block the use of social networking sites from work computers and many do this but to what extent can or should an employer control or influence an employee’s private use of social networking? More and more employers are introducing social media policies so that the expectations of both employer and employee are clear. Not every employer will consider such a policy to be essential to their operations, but it wasn’t so long ago that email policies were considered novel, and now , apart from being required to ensure compliance with workplace surveillance legislation, are considered essential by many employers who, as a result of bad experiences with employees’ use of email, have seen the need to establish boundaries around its use. So if you are considering a social media policy for your employees, here are some of the things to consider:

• Keeping the personal and the professional separate – where the use of Twitter is part of an employee’s role, the policy should deal with whether an employee should have a separate account for non-work use. Of course, this must be carefully managed – in February this year, Westpac’s official Twitter account announced that the bank was “Oh so very over it today”. This either means that major banks have off days like the rest of us, or that the person who made that post was logged into the wrong account.
• Some things are better left unpublished – Ms Deveny described her Twitter comments as being “like passing notes in class”, but employees should be reminded that the record is a little bit more public (and permanent). What might be tolerable as staff room or water cooler gossip takes on a whole new life when published on the Internet.
• Don’t imply employer endorsement of personal views – the policy should ensure that there are appropriate safeguards to ensure that the opinions of the employer and the employee are kept separate.
• Confidentiality applies on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, My Space and all other social networking sites as well – As with any means of communication, it is important to remind employees that even “gossip” about confidential matters needs to be kept confidential.
• There are consequences when an employee says something about others while social networking – An employee who says something negative about their employer, a manager or another employee may be grounds for their dismissal. Employees who are the targets of these negative comments may also have grounds to sue both the offending employee and the employer.

We have assisted employers in, for example, the media, education and professional services industries to deal with these issues. An employer may need to update IT, discrimination and harassment policies and their Code of Conduct. The best results are gained by an employer who supports these measures with training. If we can help you as well, please let us know.