Social networking or unsocial notworking?

Thursday, 15 September 2011 00:00

In recent months we have been advising more and more clients about the pitfalls of social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc to you and me) in the workplace. Social networking raises plenty of employment law issues for employers from whether to allow access in the workplace at all to how you can monitor use, detect abuse and discipline offenders.

ACAS, the free employment advice and conciliation service has this week published a number of guides for employers which are worthy of a read. The guides can be found here.

Problems with use of social networking in the workplace go far beyond time lost by an overly social networker. We have been advising on topics such as breaches of confidence, harassment and discrimination all relating to the use and abuse of social networking.

Most employers would benefit from including a social networking policy in their staff handbook to set out to staff what is unacceptable and could lead to disciplinary action.

We have prepared a social networking policy which is free for our employment advice service subscribers. For more information about our fixed fee employment advice service, click here.

For further information and advice, contact our specialist employment law team on 01392 207020 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it