With 300 million users of LinkedIn, 1.28 billion active Facebook accounts and 500 million tweets per day, the statistics speak for themselves: social media has revolutionised the way that individuals and businesses are communicating.
Whilst the value of social media to businesses cannot be underestimated – it is a relatively cheap and effective business tool for marketing and networking purposes – recent cases illustrate that it also carries business risk.
The Asda employee who posted a comment on Facebook that it would make her happy to hit customers on the back of the head with a pick axe, the very public hijack of HMV’s twitter account by disgruntled employees and the Weatherspoon’s manager who got into an argument with customers on Facebook, are a few of the increasing number of cases which illustrate the reputational damage that can be caused by employees’ conduct on social media sites.
However, reputational damage is not the only risk to businesses. Reports of NHS workers posting patients’ personal data on social media sites and the recent report of hundreds of resignations and disciplinary hearings in the police force following leaks and misuse of information highlight the risk of data protection breaches arising through the use of social media. The case of Flexman v BG Group, where Mr Flexman was accused of putting confidential company employment attrition figures on his LinkedIn account, also reminds us of the risk of confidentiality breaches by employees with the simple click of a button.
Unfortunately for the technophobes out there, social media is not a fad and it seems that it is here to stay. Indeed, as the big technology companies come up with new ways of encouraging communications “in the cloud”, it seems that the digital era is going to keep snowballing and so it is more important than ever to make sure that you are proactive in protecting your business against these kinds of risks.
How can you do this? Some employers have banned the use of social media at work altogether and have blocked access on work computers. However, with the revolution of smartphones, it is unrealistic to prevent employees from accessing social media sites whilst at work. It is far more reasonable to limit access to an employees’ own time rather than yours. Well written social media, IT and data protection policies will also help to set expectations and provide employees with guidance about what is regarded by your business as acceptable/unacceptable use of social media both during and outside of working hours. However, it is of course sensible to remember that written policies are only as effective as their implementation and so to maximise the effectiveness of your policies, you need to ensure that they are clearly communicated to staff (and supported by training where appropriate) and by actively and promptly addressing any non-compliance.
Meanwhile the law in this area continues to struggle to keep pace with the technology and some interesting and difficult issues are arising in relation to the ownership of contacts and information held within LinkedIn accounts, the extent to which an employer can seek to police and control the use of personal social media accounts by employees, and whether connecting with contacts through social media can breach the terms of restrictive covenants. We will grapple with these issues for you in a future blog.
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