Employers warned about snooping on staff via social networks

He said: “If an employer is too tough, they need to consider the potential
impact of any negative publicity. Heavy-handed monitoring can cause bad
feeling and be time consuming.

“A manager wouldn’t follow an employee down the pub to check on what he
or she said to friends about their day at work. Just because they can do
something like this online, doesn’t mean they should.”

Acas is also encouraging employers to promote the use of social networking
websites in the workplace as a “key part of business and marketing”.

The recommendation comes despite a study by myjobgroup, a jobs website, which
calculated that social media activity in the workplace costs the UK economy
£14 billion a year in lost productivity last year.

The survey found many workers were in denial about the negative effects of
using work time to look at social networking websites. Only 14 per cent of
those polled admitted to being less productive as a result of social media,
and 10 per cent claimed that using Facebook and Twitter at work boosted
their productivity.

Acas has advised bosses to draft their own social media policy in order to
avoid staff confusion about what is and isn’t allowed online.

Mr Taylor also said employees needed to be cautious about the information they
publish online. “Online conduct should not differ from offline conduct,”
he said.

Employees should assume that everything they say on the internet could be made
public, and should think whether they want their colleagues or boss to read
it.

He said: “They might not mean it, but what they post could end up being
seen by billions of people worldwide.”

Last month a father-of-three who has cancer was sacked by Argos after
complaining about his job on Facebook.

David Rowat was fired for gross misconduct after complaining about work on the
social networking website after he arrived from a two-week holiday.

Mr Rowat said that when he went back to work after the holiday “the
deliveries hadn’t been done and the place was a bit of a tip”. He
posted on his Facebook wall: “Had a great day back at work after my
hols who am I kidding!!” This was followed by: “Back to the
shambles that is work.”

An Argos spokesman said: “We take matters of this nature extremely
seriously and have arrived at this course of action after an extensive
internal investigation that involved multiple factors and events.”

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