Employers confused over Social Networking

Social networking has become an integral part of works and social life in the 21st century, Google has recently joined the race with Google Plus, Facebook continues to grow in popularity, businesses are identify new ways of talking with customers and employees are tweeting, blogging and posting to their hearts content.

But even with all this activity, finding the best way of managing the risks this volume of communication creates, is still confusing for employers.  On the one hand the benefits of having your team talking about the business is a great way of increasing the knowledge of your business in the community, but the risks are that unless they say the right things, it could soon have a negative impact to both the brand and individuals.

Managing this phenomenon is something that employers should give careful attention to.  ACAS  published its advice on the matter some time ago and the law is still finding its way as employees bring claims through the Tribunal process for unfair dismissal following online activity.

What is clear from all of the current discussion, and whilst being mindful of existing employment law, employers are best to adopt a grown up approach to how they handle the issue of social networking, with a light touch being more effective than heavy regulation, mainly because its hard to legally control what a person says about their work or their boss in their own time.

As a minimum action employers would be wise to develop and implement a simple policy that clearly states how they use personal information gathered from social networks in the business (relating to their employees) and how they expect an employee to behave in relation to their business when talking online.

For more information see social networking.