GUEST COMMENT: Beware if you're blogging about work

The popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook has mushroomed in a very short space of time. They're rapidly becoming the most favoured way of socialising with your friends and colleagues, and also offer an opportunity through "blogging" to publish your opinions and vent your frustrations- including on work issues.

You may think this is your own personal space on the social networking website expressing your own personal views and opinions. Well, you are wrong. There are potential repercussions from your employer -whether you blog within work hours or in your own personal time.

In every contract of employment, there is an implied term of trust and confidence between an employer and employee. Employees have a further implied obligation not to bring their employer into disrepute. If you make a derogatory remark about your employer on your profile or blog, such action could result in your being disciplined or dismissed as a result of a breakdown in trust and confidence.

It's happened before

The first benchmark case where this happened in the UK was in 2006, when a Waterstone's employee was "dooced"- a specific term used for dismissal resulting from the contents of a blog- for criticising his boss online. Although the blogger was ultimately successful in his appeal because the blog was not shown to be overly draconian, the risks are clear.

There have since been numerous similar cases where employees have been dismissed for crossing the line and in many cases, these have involved banks and other financial institutions.

In some cases, the employee has been held to be at fault even though a disguised name was used and the bank was never mentioned in name. The employer in these circumstances won the argument by showing that everyone knew who the bloggers were and what bank they were blogging about.

As well as overly criticising your employer, you should not be seen to be bad mouthing your work colleagues either, and this will include overtly racial or sexual discriminatory views. Employers have a legal obligation to protect their employees from discrimination on grounds of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation and they are unlikely therefore to be seen to condone unacceptable remarks from other employees.

The acceptable face of blogging

So, how do you know what types of blogging should be acceptable or not? After all employers are powerless to stop an individual blogging altogether. It is easier though, for employers to control the situation if you are blogging at work.

Most banks now have an internet policy which governs the use of your PC at work. Some employers specifically ban the use of Facebook at work and regularly monitor their employees internet activity.

The use of blogging outside work is more problematic as there is no direct monitoring tool by the employer. Some banks are, however, introducing a more specific "blogging policy" which specifically covers the situation outside work and which introduce clear limitations about the permissible contents of a blog. Such policies also reserve the right to take action if employees overstep the mark. But even without such policy, as has been seen in some of the cases, the employer can (and has) still taken the appropriate action.

The law in this area is not developed. Perhaps the best advice for the individual is that if you would not say something direct to either your employer or someone you work with, then you should think twice before blogging the same views on a social networking site. This also applies once you have left your job. You are likely to be subject to post-termination restrictions such as confidentiality, and the non-disclosure of trade secrets. In extreme cases, you could even face a claim for defamation.

It is not in an employer's interests, of course, to bring a legal claim over a blog that may have only been seen by a few of the blogger's contacts. The claim, conducted in a public forum, would project the bloggers views to a far higher audience than the initial blog could ever have done. But as the blogger, who would really want to take the risk of such a claim against them- especially if you have a prosperous future career in mind!

Feel free to contact Philip on pl@lzwlaw.co.uk or 020 7357 9494 for a free consultation on this or any other employment law issue.