Harmless or Hazardous Social Networking Sites - 21/02/2011

Many organisations are using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to increase the visibility of their company. Unfortunately there often does not appear to be any control over the activity or tone on such social networking sites. Some businesses actively encourage their employees to post on the company's page in public forums to help provide content. Many employers are far from fully conversant with this new form of communication and don't know their retweet from their #hashtag leaving them exposed to risk. Without proper controls they could easily suffer the same fate as Vodafone; following the posting of an obscene message on Twitter by one of their employees Vodafone was forced to issue an apology to hundreds of their Twitter followers. Despite Vodafone's swift action in deleting the offending tweet it did not prevent other twitterers copying the text and sending it far and wide.

It is increasingly necessary for businesses to include within the firm's internet policy a public web participation policy otherwise there is a danger that detrimental comments may go across the universe.

Another potential risk is that employees may not consider the information posted on sites such as LinkedIn to be part of their employer's confidential client information. If and when employees move on they may still have access to such information. In the case of Hays -v- Ions Mr. Ions, an employee of Hays recruitment agency of over six years standing, set up a rival agency three weeks before handing in his notice during which time he accessed Hays' client contacts through his LinkedIn account. When legally challenged he claimed that Hays had actively encouraged him to link with clients and that such information was in the public domain once the client had accepted his invitation to link. This argument was rejected by the court saying that Mr. Ions' action in uploading client information whilst he was still employed by Hays "may have done so, not for the benefit of Hays but for the benefit of his post-termination business". However, this may have been harder to demonstrate if Mr. Ions had uploaded the client information over a long period of time and waited a little bit longer to start targeting his employers' clients.

The Ministry of Justice, the Metropolitan police, Marks & Spencer and Virgin Atlantic have all had problems with staff and social networking sites and some of them have been obliged to dismiss and discipline members of staff.

The lessons are, in the first place keep control of all communications issuing from your organisation and secondly be extremely careful in allowing your employees to access client information. If you put in place strict guidelines with regard to the nature of the information permitted to be posted on public forums and also limiting the access to client contact details and then make crystal clear the disciplinary sanctions should any member of staff attempt to breach the guidelines this should go some considerable way to protect your position.

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