Employees, beware of what you post on facebook

Paula Whelan, an employment partner at Shakespeares law firm recently advised all companies to update their IT policy and disciplinary procedures and to make these changes extremely clear to their staff.

“Employees think they are bullet-proof when they post anything on Facebook or Twitter. But if they bring their employer into disrepute, the boss of that firm is well within their legal right to sack them” she said.

“By posting something even vaguely negative about your work on these social media sites, it’s breaking the relationship of trust and confidence between the employer and employee and the company reserves the right to sack the employee.”

She brought it up after the famous Flexman and BG Group dispute that happened last month. John Flexman, a former HR Executive at the BG Group brought a case for constructive dismissal after a dispute with bosses over his profile on the professional networking site. Mr Flexman is claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds from BG Group, where he earned a £68,000 salary from his job in charge of graduate recruitment. As well as uploading his CV, Mr Flexman ticked a box to register an interest in “career opportunities”.

But he was contacted by his manager while on holiday in the US and ordered to remove his CV. On his return, Mr Flexman was accused of “inappropriate use of social media” and called to attend an internal disciplinary hearing.

He was handed a list of disciplinary charges and told he could be sacked, Reading Employment Tribunal heard. He later resigned.

It still remains a grey area as to what type of comment on social media constitutes “bringing a company into disrepute”. Somebody writing “I had a terrible day at work”, and that person’s job being publicly available via a search on LinkedIn, could get somebody in trouble with their company, according to Ms Whelan – as it could make the firm concerned look like a bad place to work.