In this issue of Lawyers Alert, our friends at Jaffe Associates provide some appropriate encouragement to all law firms to establish social media policies to guide partners, associates and employees in their home and workplace use of the Internet and social media websites.
The importance of such policies is emphasized by a recent case in Alberta involving a woman who was terminated from her employment for blogging about her job and co-workers. The woman started a blog on the advice of her therapist to "write down her thoughts" as part of her stress therapy. Over time, the woman began expanding the content of her blog to include comments about her experiences at work, including derogatory comments about the workplace atmosphere and some of her co-workers. Though she did not identify her co-workers by name, her own identity and the fact that she worked for the Alberta government were listed prominently in the blog.
The Alberta Arbitration Board upheld the employer's decision to terminate the employee for this activity. (The employee's application to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench for judicial review was granted on other grounds.) In particular, the Board felt that, while the woman certainly had the right to post her opinions publicly, she must be prepared to face the consequences such postings might have on her employment relationship. Here, the woman's postings had been "inherently destructive to workplace relationships and inimical to the normal expectation of respect and dignity" to which her employer and co-workers were entitled. It is safe to assume the same principles would apply to statements made on other media like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.
A clear social media policy might have helped to avoid some or all of this dispute. It may not be appropriate to eliminate an employee's access to online social media entirely. But employees should be made aware of the reasonable expectations of the employer in this regard. And most importantly, they should be aware that anything they do online can have an effect on their employment relationship.