Is blogging the new whistle-blowing?

October 18th, 2008

Rather than simply being a bit of harmless fun, have blogs actually prompted a change in working practices? Is this perhaps a new way of getting unscrupulous or old-fashioned employers to change their ways, or a dangerous employment game with potential gross misconduct consequences?

What do you do if you find out your employees are writing about you on the internet? Do you join in and build on a popular listing, thereby showing you’ve got a sense of humour and are open to feedback, or do you throw the book at them and try to get the site pulled immediately? I guess that largely depends on what they’re writing, but when it’s something you’d prefer stayed behind closed doors, then you could legitimately be looking at a gross misconduct dismissal for bringing the company name into disrepute, or even perhaps, breach of confidentiality depending on the contents and what’s already in the public domain.

We’ve already seen cases where employees have been sacked for what’s been written in their blogs (remember Waterstones some two years or so ago, when blogging was strictly for geeks?), but as the media continues to obsess about the time spent by employees on social networking sites like Facebook (I have to confess it is rather addictive, and yes, I have been going on there in work time – sorry!), could this actually become a legitimate way of raising concerns about a company?

Could the blog become the new whistle-blowing letter to the firm’s accountants or other nominated ‘safe’ contact of the future, and thus give the author automatic protection from recriminations from the firm??? Could these sorts of postings be deemed to be in the public interest? Might we see future legislation or maybe case law indicating that the practice of blogging is the worker’s ‘right’ to freedom of speech, and that any wrong-doing highlighted therein is a ‘protected disclosure’?

Sounds a bit far-fetched for the time-being, but who knows – with the way case law and legislation is going in this country – watch this space!

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