Are your employees abusing social networks? Should employers ban Facebook and other social media? What kind of social media policies should employers have in place?
Clay Lucas, Workplace Editor for The Age, has written an intriguing piece which serves as a cautionary tale as to why businesses should not take social media issues lightly.
Employers that give their staff free rein on social media websites risk damage to their brand, and confidential information being leaked, a workplace law expert has warned.
And research to be published soon on the amount of time Australian workers spend using applications such as Facebook and Twitter indicates most dip briefly in and out of them, with only a small percentage of workers seriously over-using them at work.
Tony Vernier, managing director of Australian Business Lawyers and Advisors, told an industrial relations conference in Melbourne this month that employers should tell their staff what is acceptable when using social media.
"And you can't just have a policy on the shelf – if people don't know about it, it's as if you don't have a policy," Mr Vernier said.
A small number of employers have fired staff for using social media in the workplace in Australia in the last three years, although in many cases the dismissal has been found to be unfair.
A Melbourne landscape architect fired last year for overusing Google's mail chat service was found to have been unfairly dismissed. Richard O'Connor was abruptly sacked for more than "3000 transactions on a chat line during work time". But Fair Work Australia found that, as no guidance had been given by the employer about net use, the excessive use did not justify his dismissal.
Mr Vernier said that in the last year, many of Australia's bigger companies had put in place social media policies, but small and medium sized businesses had not.
He cited a recent Linfox case involving a truck driver with 22 years experience who had posted insulting messages about his workmates.
The driver, Glen Stutsel, was sacked for comments made on his Facebook page, including one about his site manager, a Muslim, who he called a "bacon hater". Mr Stutsel got his job back because the court believed his argument that he had thought the conversation with his Facebook friends was private.
Read the full article on social media being dangerous for employers here
Further reading on social media debates:
- New and inventive ways to prevent Facebook from harming productivity
- How web filtering in the cloud works
