Most companies have resorted to social media as a promotional strategy and channel to reach their main customers. It has been found that for businesses operating particularly in the consumer goods and hospitality industries, social media is a must in order to simply remain alive within the competitive market that exists today. Businesses practice using social media for branding, communication and promotional purposes. The fine line that lies between using social media for work purposes and social media for leisure can cause huge debate. Therefore, a social media policy strategy must be practiced to avoid unfair dismissals from arising.
Several employees all around Australia have already lost their jobs due to inappropriate comments, ‘likes’ and ‘tweets’ made on social media networks and a lacking social media policy. James Manning from the Sydney Morning Herald reported that, Alec Armstrong was sacked after commenting on Facebook that the council had too many office staff and not enough workers. Jane Morgan was fired from her job at a construction management company in Sydney in 2009 after she wrote a message on a friend's Facebook wall saying the company "sucks".
As our society focuses more on communicating using technology via social media networks, there are more risks to the reputations of businesses with unhappy or regular status updating employees. People can communicate to several hundreds of people at a time in just a few seconds and any bad comments mentioning a particular company’s name or processes can be more damaging and costly than the legal expenses required to go to court.
Mr. Young a partner at the Sydney-based law firm Holman Webb believes that coming out against the company in the public domain can be reasonable grounds for dismissal.
In contrast, “a decision handed down by Commissioner Roberts of Fair Work Australia reinstated an employee of Linfox who had been dismissed for material which the employee had posted on Facebook. Commissioner Roberts noted that Linfox did not have a social media policy either at the time of the employee's dismissal, or at the time of hearing. Instead, Linfox sought to rely on its induction training and handbook. The absence of a social media policy, Commissioner Roberts observed, was "not sufficient" and was considered an unfair dismissal.”
So what is the purpose for social media policy?
Social media policies have two main purposes, to provide reasonable guidance to employees so that their use of social media does not get them into trouble with their employer and to provide a written basis for any disciplinary action, including dismissal which the employer may consider necessary for adverse action.
What social media use is an employer entitled to regulate?
The most challenging part of creating the social media policy is differentiating between the social media use in the course of employment. Employees who are in charge of the social media communications channel vs. personal social media use that is unnecessary to complete the job description responsibilities. Guidance for such employees is best provided in their individual job descriptions and the social media policy is to be used as guidelines for social media use which occurs outside the course of employment.
Employers are entitled to address social media communication which is taking place outside of the course of employment on the employer’s equipment (i.e. computer or smartphones) as well as social media communication occurring in the employee’s home with their own equipment as it has the potential to damage the employer and their reputation.
“When it comes to social media use outside the course of employment, there are four broad areas in which that social media use has the capacity to affect employment (and thus, in turn, to concern the employer, and to merit attention in the employer's social media policy).” These include, social media use which has the capacity to damage the employee’s professional reputation, the reputation of the employer, the employee’s ability to work with their colleagues and finally social media use that breaches another of the employer’s policies e.g. discrimination, harassment and bullying policy.
These must be identified throughout the social media policy in order to truly inform employees of when and how they can use social media and when their actions can become a risk to their employment. This in turn will avoid claims for unfair dismissals and make the grounds of unfair dismissal easily understood by all parties.
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