What an Employer Needs to Know About Staff Social Media Usage in England

Many businesses leverage social media platforms to market their goods and services. Consequently, employees will have greater access to social media in the workplace. The use of social media for personal use in the workplace is a grey area in terms of the powers you as an employer have. However, taking unlawful action, such as breaching your employee’s privacy, can lead to an employment dispute. This article will explain why you might want to manage your employees’ use of social media and how you might manage their use. 

Why You Might Want to Manage Social Media Usage? 

As an employer, you likely want to manage your staff’s social media usage to avoid misuse. Misusing social media can have dire consequences for your business’ reputation. Some examples of employees misusing social media both in and out of the workplace include:

• negative comments about how employers have handled the coronavirus pandemic in the workplace;
• inappropriate posts of other employees, customers or clients;
• posting confidential information;
• placing negative reviews of your business which could damage your reputation; and 
• bullying and harassing employees.

You may want to manage staff use of social media to aid your business in, for example:

• stopping potential security branches; and
• preventing employment claims.

How Can an Employer Manage Social Media Use?

To effectively manage how your employees use social media, you should have a workplace policy to help reduce risks associated with social media use. Beyond establishing rules for using social media in the workplace and at home, a social media policy should also set out:

• how your employees can use social media;
• what your employees are not allowed to do in terms of social media;
• what actions you might take when employees misuse social media;
• rules against posting confidential information, defamatory remarks and illegal content; and
• how to behave when using social media for your business, such as being polite when speaking to customers.

Where your employees do not use social media correctly, you should follow a fair disciplinary procedure. However, if your employees’ misuse of social media amounts to gross misconduct, you may consider taking legal action against your employees, such as for defamation or malicious falsehood. Nevertheless, before taking such action, you should seek legal advice. 

What Can an Employer Do To Manage Social Media?

While you may want to monitor your employees’ use of social media as an employer, you must do so proportionately and not deny your employees’ rights. For example, you should be careful to:

• separate their work use and their personal use of social media;
• not unlawfully restrict their right to private life;
• ensure you do not unlawfully restrict freedom of expression; and
• not break your duty of mutual trust and confidence with your employees as an implied employment contract term.

Where you investigate the use of social media by using disciplinary procedures, you should exercise discretion alongside:

• how serious the social media post is;
• when and how the post was made;
• the contents of the post;
• how severely the post affects your business’ reputation; and 
• any circumstances surrounding them, such as if your employee was ill and had impaired judgement.

Key Takeaways

An employee’s misuse of social media could damage your business’ reputation. Therefore, it is essential that, as an employer, you monitor your employees’ use of social media and create rules surrounding this. A social media policy can enable you to do this as it can contain your rules on what is acceptable when using social media. It can also let your employees know what actions you may take when their usage is unacceptable. However, you must not unlawfully infringe on your employees’ rights, such as their right to private life. 

If you need help implementing a workplace social media policy, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

Frequently Asked Questions