Scary headline!

This seems to be the conclusion of research by Croner as reported by the BBC. The essence of the story seemed to be that employees risked being sacked if they put ‘derogatory or damaging’ comments in their personal blogs.

Out of 2000 people surveyed 39% said they made ‘harmful comments’.

The report uses legal speak from a spokesperson at Croners to explain the situation – ‘if there is a negative impact...that...breaches the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, the employee could be dismissed..’

Possibly true but employers need to be concerned about how they deal with personal blogs by employees too. Take the case of Catherine Sanderson. Employed by an English company in France she had a private blog which did not reveal her real name, nor her employers name. She did occasionally write about aspects of her office job and the company. Her employers dismissed her in mid-2006 for damaging the company’s reputation. She took them to a tribunal. She won her case earlier this year and received a years salary as compensation.

Now before making a post like this I always access the source material and read it. Then I put some personal comments on it based upon my personal experience. What I wanted to do was understand the questions that were asked. What was considered ‘harmful’? As the Sanderson case proved, ‘harmful comments’, can be a matter of dispute. I also wondered if bloggers were doing this despite a company having a blogging policy?

The BBC report had no source reference so I went to the Croner web site. It is a rich content site. The area listing reports and research contained no mention of this research so I used the web sites ‘search facility’ and entered various combinations of words. Up popped something called ‘Bloggy hell!’ Unfortunately it was a summary and not a detailed report so I sent them an e-mail asking for more details.

The point Croner wanted to make was that blogging should be treated like e-mails and be included in the contract of employment and employee handbooks with appropriate training where necessary.

This is exactly what companies have done that encourage employee blogging. They see it as an extension of customer engagement. They have guidelines and training programmes in place for anyone who wants to blog. For them they want their employees to act as ambassadors for the company. With that objective and attitude it is far less likely that employees will deliberately set out to damage the company.