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Social media cases in the Employment Tribunal have involved everything from employees posting derogatory comments about their employer, sharing offensive content, cyber bullying and everything in between. Here Laura Claridge from Clarkson Wright & Jakes answers some common questions about social media.
Do we need a social media policy?
Yes, even if you are not active on social media, your employees will be. A key factor in many Tribunal cases is whether the employee was aware of the employer’s policies about what is or is not acceptable, so the policy needs to be accessible and brought to employees’ attention.
The policy should set out expectations including:
- Personal use: permitted during working hours?
- Prohibited use: this may be stating the obvious, but will include not disparaging the business, harassing staff on social media or posting offensive content.
- Guidelines for use: for example, do not use work email address, make clear that views are your own, not ours and so on.
- How breaches will be handled: disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.
We have heard that one of employees who is off sick has posted pictures of himself on a day out on Instagram, can we dismiss him?
As with any potential misconduct you need to investigate. If an employee is signed off with depression, they will have been advised to get out if they can, but with the flu a trip to a theme park would not be appropriate. When were the pictures taken, try not to jump to conclusions. If after this review, there is a case to answer then give the employee a chance to respond via a disciplinary process.
An employee is bullying another employee over Twitter outside of work, is this something we need to deal with?
Yes, even if it is outside of work, this will inevitably affect work and it is unlikely that the bullying will be taking place exclusively online, so interview the ‘victim’ when you become aware of it and again, follow up with the other employee. Commence disciplinary action if appropriate. Likewise, if you become aware of racist or other offensive posts, they are in the public domain and you can investigate and take appropriate action, ideally backed up by a social media policy confirming that such posts are not acceptable.
To speak to a member of our employment team in complete confidence, please contact 01689 887840 or email laura.claridge@cwj.co.uk