Facebook causing more Problems for the Employment Relationship

There was another example this week of employees being sacked because of what they have said on their facebook site.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that this is further evidence of a major problem facing employers and employees ,and increasingly so.

This one had an an employee using his Facebook site to make alleagedly racist, homophobic and derogatory comments about a range of people.Some of these people included work colleagues and the workplace was mentioned as well. I think this might have been a crucial factor in the company's decision to stand down and ultimately terminate the employee.

Without at all condoning the opinions of the employee, I think that it may have been problematic for an employer to take action against an employee if some of those opinions had not been directed at the employer or fellow employees.This is a very grey area in matters such as these-the distinction between privacy and detriment to the business of an employer.

There is no news as yet on whether the employee intends to fight the decision to terminate however I believe an important factor in whether the employer is on safe ground will be the extent to which the employer had any policy on the use of social media.In the absence of a strong policy, it may well be open to the employee to successfully challenge the decision based on unfairness, particularly when he was using a site that he did not believe that connected to the workplace.

This is the first in a series of blogs over the next few weeks addressing social media issues in the workplace, so stay tuned.

On an unrelated note, congratulations to the Green Bay Packers on a fine win in the Super Bowl last week-a great game and a fine performance from Aaron Rodgers.Readers will be aware that my mate and fellow tipster TK is a Packers fan so congratulations to him as well.And for those scoring, yours truly made a fine comeback in the tipping contest to win by 2 overall.Looking foward to that lunch, TK.......