Having just started blogging I’ve begun to appreciate from a personal perspective the career dangers of blogging. Previously I had regarded the risks in the more professional and analytical ways of a lawyer instructed by a client. At a personal level I now see the risks in a more immediate sense. There is something so narcissistic and self absorbing about blogging that it is easy to see just why people dump themselves in the shit. Ah, you see? that’s what I mean - I said ‘shit‘. Now if I’d written that in a report to a client and been caught I would have had the proverbial legal precedent kicked out of me by a partner of the firm. Luckily I answer only to myself so I know the boss will be sympathetic. But for everyone else the combination of an audience and the ‘publish’ button is a sirens call.
Many people believe that they have an unqualified right to free speech: if what happens to them is of interest then they have the right to discuss it in just the same way that they would with their mates down the pub after work. But pub conversations very rarely get published around the World which is what happens when you commit your pages to the Web, and once published those blog pages become nigh on impossible to retract: they hit the Google cache and there they remain for all eternity.
At law, employers have always had limited legitimate interest in the behaviour of their employees outside of the immediate environment of work. This is so simply because employee behaviour out of hours can affect the employer: look at footballers. At the same time courts have recognised that employees are entitled to a private life as a basic human right: time of their own which is not the subject of an employers disciplinary powers. Why should an employer be able to tell an employee not to smoke grass in their own home? or to get drunk on a Saturday night? or even get in punch ups with the next door neighbour? While he may view these as morally reprehensible they are essentially private matters.
For an employer there are legitimate concerns over employee blogging just as with other forms of post-vocational activity: that unhappy employees will badmouth the company and affect its reputation. Or that a garrulous salesman will reveal impending products or sale strategies. Or that female employees will pose topless.
Equally what will the contents of a blog do to the companies contractual structures? does a comment in an employees blog amount to a collateral term or a representation in a contract? Is blogging even covered by the terms of employment?
All difficult topics. Some can be avoided by several moments reflection done before the finality of publishing! I’ll try and write a paper for this for my main site when I get some time. If you have specific comments let me know and I’ll try include them in it, or answer them here.
No comments yet.