Watching the watchers – clearing up your digital dirt
Posted under Witterings
I read an interesting article recently on Fresh Business Thinking called Staff and their Personal Blogs. Fresh Business Thinking is a fantastic site for small business owners, providing a wealth of information on every topic imaginable connected with running a business including how to deal with staff and the troubles their pesky personal blogs can bring about.
Most of the article (which was written by lawyers) deals with advising employers to have a written policy about personal blogs, in terms of not writing them during working hours and not writing content that could bring the employer in to disrepute etc etc. It’s a bit of an eye opener that Grown Ups need to be told this kind of stuff. Isn’t that a basic rule of engagement? When at work, do your work. If you’ve got a problem with the boss/colleague, talk to them…don’t bitch about it on the internet. One of the cases discussed in the article concerns a blogger who was dismissed by Waterstones after he blogged about them very negatively, calling them ‘Bastardstones’. I will admit, I giggled at that.
Frankly, anyone who gets caught slagging off their employer in the internet is (a) an idiot and (b) deserves what they get as a result. Surely you don’t need the employee handbook to tell you not to bring your employer in to disrepute by tweeting/facebooking/blogging out your work related rage? And nor can you rely on attempts to remain anonymous, since much of the current case law is made up of ‘anonymous’ bloggers/facebookers who got caught out. Doesn’t ever decent employment contract contain a clause about being a jolly good upstanding member of the community and not doing anything that could bring the employer in to disrepute anyway? And heaps of stuff about confidentiality etc?
Rather more sinister for all of us Sensibles who don’t slag off their employer online is the final section of the article which deals with ‘Vetting Potential Staff’. The author advises employers not to check up on the personal blogs/facebook pages etc of potential recruits, as it could lead to discrimination claims at a later date. However, the last paragraph of the article clearly demonstrates that some employers DO get busy with google when assessing candidates (and frankly that’s not news). Here is their advice to potential recruits:
“Given that this vetting practice is becoming more common, people should think carefully of the image that they want to portray of themselves online. Before embarking on a job search, individuals would be best advised to clean up their digital dirt by removing content from their personal blogs , Facebook profiles and the like, if there is a possibility that this could send out the wrong messages to potential recruiters.”
I’ve been thinking about my ‘digital dirt’ for a while now, mostly in the context of whether to protect my Tweets or not. At the moment they are not protected, but sometimes they are depending on how ‘public/private’ I’m feeling. I follow various work related people and, ideally, I don’t want them following me back without my permission. Partly because I don’t want them to read the inane rubbish that I Tweet about, but also because I don’t particularly want to lead them to my blog. There’s nothing personally or professionally embarrassing on my blog, nothing that would lose me my job since I’m very careful not to discuss work here. But this is my PERSONAL blog and I like to draw a line between work and play. Alas I have blurred the line myself by following work people on Twitter. Motto: get another Twitter account.
It’s no huge deal if people from work or clients read Chez Spud and, if anyone was in any doubt, I’m easily identifiable given my penchant for the odd self-portrait or 20. Frankly, if you REALLY wanted to find me a little bit of googling would probably get you here quite quickly. Oh, and if you google ‘sex with a pig’, ‘pig in a wig’, ‘ugly girl with glasses’ you’ll get here too. So that’s nice isn’t it? But if my boss told me he’d stumbled across Chez Spud I’d have a moment of slightly embarrassed wibbles but then I’d sit back and wait for him to congratulate me on my natural wit and incisive writing style. Ha. But I’d be totally confident he’d find nothing about our clients, our business, my ‘shit day at the office’, how much I hate my boss or anything insinuating etc on here. Because I just don’t cross that line, common sense says that’s a good policy. (Also, if you’re reading MrBoss…you are brilliant and I love every day of my life working for you. Can I have a rise?)
I’m frequently surprised by really inappropriate/ill-advised/poorly thought through/just ‘too’ personal content on blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc. People showing off about their fun jaunts when they are supposed to be ‘working from home’, heavyweight financial reporters tweeting that their new headphones ‘are SEX’ from their corporate account, all that kind of stuff. People Tweeting all day long when they’re at work, writing blog posts at the office, chatting in chat rooms during working hours. It astonishes me at times. A previous employer of mine had two full-time members of the IT team who monitored employees’ internet usage all day, every day (is that legal?). It was all rather secret, of course, and I only knew because I was involved with an investigation which led to a couple of employees being ‘exited’(not me!), shall we say. But, surely, any large organisation will have some kind of monitoring of both usage and content going on? Formal, or informal.
Perhaps I’m more sensitive to this kind of issue because I work in a highly risk averse industry (the law) and specialise in reputation management. Perhaps I’m just more tuned in to the damage that can be done at both the corporate and personal level by our own ‘dirt’, digital or otherwise. I don’t want to spin off to Paranoia Land, but I do think it’s worth keeping half an eye on the profile that we are creating of ourselves on the internet through blogging and all that jazz. Does it match, more or less, the profile that we put forward in our ‘real’ lives? I really think it’s an error to rely on blogging ‘anonymously’ by not revealing your name, or your employer’s name (as La Petite Anglaise found to her cost – well, her job anyway, she actually cleaned up financially so perhaps she really lucked out.
Perhaps a good rule of thumb should be: if you need to share something but wouldn’t want your employer/mother/child to read it, either now or in the future, don’t say it. Or, if you really MUST say it, get a private blog. Or an old fashioned journal and a safe. Or an imaginary friend. But don’t put it on the web if it could compromise you at some point and, whatever it is, do it in your own time not your employers.
Here endeth the lesson.
PS Dear Boss…this blog post was written in my time not yours. No company time was illegally stolen in the production of this blog post. No clients will be billed for my hectoring diatribe. Just call me Little Miss Perfect.
by Kathryn Stockett…no pretty endpapers but a super read.
