It could be a negative comment about your business, a colleague or a client. Whatever the content of the social media post, taking stock and responding proportionately is important, explains Verity Slater, partner in the employment team at Stephens Scown LLP.
Despite your initial panic and annoyance if you find out that one of your employees has been posting something that concerns you online, it is important not to rush into a knee jerk reaction. First capture the evidence with a screen shot, then carefully consider your next steps.
It is important to have a robust social media policy that you make your staff aware of. If your employee has clearly breached that policy it makes it easier to take action.
However, you still need to think about what the actual impact is by considering the number of people who have seen the post and how damaging it really is to your business. Dismissed employees have won unfair dismissal claims where the Employment Tribunal found that the impact was not that severe, and employers had not been clear enough about what was expected.
It is important to follow your disciplinary process carefully, especially if your employee has more than two years’ service.
If you routinely monitor employee online activity you must undertake a privacy impact assessment and make this clear in your social media and data protection policies.
Social media can offer a great opportunity for your business to interact directly with customers and stakeholders, but when an employee steps across the line to post something that is unacceptable, it is important to think carefully about your response.
This article was first published in Business Cornwall, March 2020.