All organisations need to consider the fact that many of their employees will blog and some of them will refer to their workplace in their blogs. If an appropriate company policy is not in place on this issue, the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable practice will not be clear and disputes will arise.
This has been brought to prominence recently in the UK with the “Waterstone’s Case”, in which an employee of 11 years, Joe Gordon, posted inappropriate comments about his workplace on his blog The Woolamaloo Gazette, culminating in his dismissal for derogatory comments about his “sandal wearing evil boss”. This action rather backfired on Waterstones when it was subjected to adverse publicity fuelled by bloggers sympathetic to Gordon’s cause. Prior to this, in the USA, Delta Air Lines dismissed flight attendant Ellen Simonetti for “misuse of uniform” – pictures on her personal blog “Queen of Sky”, now Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant, of herself in her uniform on an empty plane; her blog also contained thinly-veiled work stories. Another US example is the case of Heather Armstrong who was dismissed for making derogatory comments about her work colleagues on dooce.com; and the phrase “to be dooced”, meaning “to lose one’s job as a result of comments in a blog”, has subsequently entered the blogging lexicon.
A concise article on the topic is in Cobbetts Employment Matters February 2005: Danger! Bloggers at Work! which counsels:
“In order to protect themselves and their business interests, it is important for employers that a detailed email and internet policy is produced, implemented and policed. If employees know what is expected from them, and are aware of what is acceptable or otherwise, then there can be no arguments in the event that disciplinary steps are instigated against them. Conversely, failure to have such a policy in place may result in claims that sanctions imposed are too draconian and may lay an employer open to claims in the employment tribunal.”
Charlene Li of Forrester Research suggests some blogging policy examples in her blog: one for a company to provide guidelines to its employee bloggers, and the other for the blogger – a “code of ethics” – to build trust with readers.
