Page 18 - Law Academic Newsletter 2015

Workplaces are forced to either invoke current policies that protect their confidential information and reputation; but more importantly, to devise and train on policies that spells out to employees what they may and may not post. The most important message must be, that nothing you put on any of your social media websites is private. Some organisations have adopted the approach of banning access to all social media pages during work hours. This is a fine balance that workplaces must tread. In the words of a senior financial analyst at a global investment bank: “You expect me to manage a multi-million dollar portfolio and yet you do not trust me to access my own social media page?” Blocking social media usage is also not useful in an age, where most employees have one, or often, several smart devices at their disposal. Good policies, communicated to all and education around prudent usage is much more effective.
Many employees, when confronted with an incident of a potentially damaging statement on their Facebook page, profess complete surprise that this is not acceptable to the organisation. “What were you thinking”is a common response of the company, when an employee has posted confidential information and copied in all their friends, some of whom happen to include “friends” from the company client base. What is clear, is the employee was not thinking. Education is thus critical. Education around what can be posted, by whom, to whom and what the pitfalls are of the very public face of these electronic platforms.
Some social media platforms also allow employees to amass contacts and a customer base – a list, which when an employee leaves the organisation, becomes a valuable spring-board for the employee to potentially set up a business in direct competition with their employer. These contacts may not have been made if the employee had not enjoyed the reputation and status given to them by the company they worked for. In this arena too, companies have failed to adequately protect themselves.
Risks around the usage of employees of social media in the workplace abound. Right to privacy, damage to reputations (both of fellow employees and the organisation they work for), breaches of confidentiality and restraints of trade, protection of personal information of employees, interception of communications and cyber-bullying are some of the legal issues companies have had to face. The capacity to shame people and organisations is one of the biggest risks. The potential for instant dissemination to a wider audience that was previously thought possible amplifies this risk exponentially. The more proactive companies are about protecting themselves before the damage is done, the more effectively this risk is minimised.
Marleen Potgieter
Author
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