Social Network Sites and Work

For the record, the most widely used social network sites are:

Facebook - a social networking service where users create personal profiles, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their own profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organised by common characteristics (e.g. workplace).

Twitter - a microblogging service enabling its users to send and read publicly visible messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page. Users may subscribe to other users’ tweets.

A blog is a type of website or part of a website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary and descriptions of events (blogging). The content of a microblog is simply smaller in size.

LinkedIn - a business-related social networking site mainly used for professional networking. Users maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called connections. This list of connections can then be used to build up a contact network, follow different companies and find jobs, people and business opportunities.

MySpace - an online community of users’ personal profiles. These typically include photographs, information about personal interests and blogs. Users send one another messages and socialise within the MySpace community.

YouTube - a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. A wide variety ofuser-generated video content is displayed, including film and TV clips as well as amateur content such as videoblogging. Media corporations including the BBC also offer some of their material via the site. Most videos enable users to leave and exchange comments.

The main questions that commonly arise at work are whether these sites can be accessed by employees at all whist at work, or whether any such access is agreed or condoned by employers but is subject to restrictions by the employer, either in terms of the times and duration that such use is authorised (e.g. at lunchtime only or during other breaks/downtime) or in terms of the equipment used to access the sites (e.g. a ban on the use of the employers equipment to do so).

All employers can reasonably restrict or ban completely the use during working hours when employees can access these sites and may also confirm that they do not authorise any such use on their computer systems. A clear policy on such use is recommended and we are able to provide an instant solution to such policy and procedural requirements contact us.

When employers become aware of work related comments placed by their employees on social network sites, they should take care to ensure that the correct interpretation of the comments is applied and that any disciplinary sanction that they apply, including dismissal, falls within what is reasonable in the circumstances.

In a recent Employment Tribunal case, the dismissal of an employee was found to be unfair as it did not meet the requirements of this “reasonableness” test. The employee had the following entries and exchange on Facebook on a particular day after work from her home computer

“I think I work in a nursery and I do not mean working with plants”, followed by

“Don’t worry takes a lot for the bastards to grind me down LOL”

A former employee then later posted an entry “ Ya, work with a lot of planks though!!! LOL” to which the employee in the case replied “2true xx”

As in all cases, there are many details contained within the decision that relate to the detailed evidence put before the Tribunal . However, the judgment of the case contained analysis by the Employment Tribunal which resulted in some criticism of the employer for not putting the employee’s comments into context. Also, the Tribunal found that the comments made no specific reference to the employer and there was also no evidence that there had been any embarrassment caused to the employer by the comments. An award of almost £15,000 was made against the employer for the unfair dismissal.

The message therefore is that employers should be aware that they can certainly not tolerate derogatory and damaging entries on social networking sites by employees but should also be careful that any sanction taken is appropriate to the comments made and to their impact.

For all advice on these matters, please contact us