Employers Find New Human Resource Challenge: Blogging

by Megan Belcher

Have you ever had a nightmare where you dreamed someone was writing terrible things about you and publishing it to the world? For some employers, that nightmare is coming true. With web logs, or “blogs” as they are more popularly known, employers face the reality of employees writing disparaging commentary about their employers and co-workers for the world to read. Consequently, employee blogging is the newest and perhaps most challenging hurdle for employers as they create and implement their human resource polices and practices.   

Blogs are online diaries and forums in which individuals write about various topics, including personal experiences and current events. The “posts” are typically written in chronological fashion, usually with an informal writing style, much as you might see in email correspondence. Blogs typically also offer a comment function permitting readers to write and post their commentary on each individual post. For added interest, blogs incorporate images—even audio and video files—to assist in telling the writer’s story.

In recent years, the number of blogs and blog writers has risen dramatically. Technorati, a company that tracks blogging activity, estimates that as of July 2006, more than 50 million blogs were in existence, with the “blogosphere” doubling in size approximately every six months. In addition, free blogging programs make publishing to the Internet as easy as sending an email, facilitating the kind of spontaneous writing style that is so popular on blogs.

If the thought of the contents of some employees’ off-the-cuff writings being published to the Internet is not enough to keep human resource professionals awake at night, then I do not know what is.   

Given the popularity of blogging and the kind of public and personal communication it aids, employers should turn their attention to their response via their policies. In the harassment context, it is not a stretch to imagine the potential for employer liability should an employee post inappropriate content to the Internet to which other employees have access. Blogs also create the potential for employee disclosure of confidential employee information, as well as other breaches of the employer’s policies.  Finally, and as with employee email use, employers have good reason to be concerned about employee productivity for those employees who blog while at work. 

As employers begin to address employee blogging, they meet a number of inquiries. For example, many employers wonder if they should permit blogging at the workplace. Although employers may benefit from employee’s appreciation of the ability to use the employer’s computer systems for their personal pursuit, the legal risks often outweigh the benefits. Most employers should and do choose to use policies to prohibit personal blogging while at work.

However, an employer’s regulation of employee blogging on personal time is a tougher call for most employers. An employer should balance their concern for the integrity of its employment policies with employee free speech rights. Although some companies strictly prohibit any employee blogging—and there have been numerous cases of employees being fired because of their blogs—it is a slippery slope for employers to regulate what employees do in their free time. 

In deciding what your company’s blogging policy will be, you should weigh a number of factors. As primary steps, employers should identify potential problems the company could encounter because of employee blogging and what kind of policy would best fit the employer’s corporate culture. An employer’s blogging policy should also be written and specifically encourage employee discretion with respect to confidential information and consideration for co-workers. In addition, the employer should provide examples in the policy of what is and is not appropriate commentary, making it clear that any breach of the employer’s blogging policy may result in discipline—up to and including termination of employment. Employers should further ensure that their blogging policy is consistent with their anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies. 

By creating a policy consistent with your corporate culture, clearly communicating that policy to employees, and enforcing that policy in a non-discriminatory manner, you will put your best foot forward in addressing the challenge of employee blogging. Without taking such proactive steps, you could quickly find yourself the subject of some unwanted publicity via the Internet, or even worse, a lawsuit from an angry employee who had the misfortune of reading a graphic narrative about his less than professional performance at the last company happy hour.

 

Megan Belcher is an attorney at Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin. She can be reached by phone at 816.983.8322 or by email at mbelcher@blackwellsanders.com.