All the world’s a-twitter nowadays it seems, if only to find out which celebrities have taken out Super Injunctions to cover up their salacious extra-curricular activities this week.
Some employers positively encourage the use of social networking sites for communication and marketing purposes, yet many people can easily forget that every twitter or posting creates a permanent and indelible record and that their flippant or drunken postings may come back to haunt them. Even on more sober sites such as LinkedIn employees may blithely post confidential material without realising that it could do damage to their employer’s business.
Even private messages sent outside working hours can land employees in trouble. In Gosden v Lifeline, Mr Gosden sent an email from his home computer to a former colleague’s home pc which contained racist and sexist material but telling the recipient to pass it on.
The email came to the attention of his employer when it was sent to an important client and Mr Gosden was duly dismissed. The Tribunal said the dismissal was fair. Even though he had a right to privacy under the Human Rights Act 1998, and even though it was a private email sent outside working hours, the Tribunal bore in mind that Mr Gosden wanted his colleague to pass it on. Furthermore the sentiments expressed were completely contrary to the charity Lifeline’s stated aims and may have brought them into disrepute.
With a twitter or Facebook posting, whatever the employee says is out there on the internet and he or she is likely to have fully waived the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. To avoid this kind of problem arising in the first place, employers would be wise to put a policy in place setting out what social media activity is considered misconduct and to make sure all staff are aware of it.
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