Checking blog sites at recruitment stage has to come with its caveats

Published on Monday 17 September 2007 01:11

THE advance of technology has brought mixed blessings - it has simplified many business operations but, at the same time, brought a new range of concerns for employers.

Computer systems can now be used, with ease, to send defamatory e-mails or to access "entertainment" of the most dubious kind. As if that were not enough, employers now face the arrival of yet another computer-based phenomenon - the inexorable rise of the personal blog through the popularity of sites such as MySpace.

These allow participants to post a running commentary on their lives. Some scribes spare no detail, however controversial or personal.

Blogs are by their very nature uncontrolled. They may contain material that would be of serious concern to employers. Some appear to contain flagrant breaches of customer confidentiality.

It is also not uncommon to find an author bemoaning working conditions, attacking the reputation of an employer or giving out information about themselves which could affect their position.

There are a growing number of examples as to why the issue is now firmly on employers' radar. I am aware of a company that recently encountered an employee's blog on MySpace, which contained details of his social life - including a list of parties and other events he had attended recently. These details came as a surprise to his now former employers - particularly as he had been engaging in these social pursuits while absent from work and informing them he was too ill even to contemplate attending meetings.

Employers have options once aware of a personal blog - they can ignore it as something outside and unconnected to the workplace, or treat it in the same manner they would, say, a letter to a newspaper.

There are many circumstances in which an employer is perfectly entitled to - and may be obliged to - act, particularly if a blog contains material likely to damage the employer's reputation, is defamatory of other colleagues, breaches customer confidentiality or casts doubt on the employee's credibility.

In 2005 Joe Gordon was dismissed from a branch of Waterstone's in Edinburgh after criticising the business in his blog. The store did not accept his argument that the comments, which made reference to his boss as being "evil" and substituted the business name with an expletive, were examples of acceptable satire or a reasonable exercise of free speech. (They later accepted at appeal that his dismissal had been wrong and was offered reinstatement.) What would have happened if the roles were reversed? If the store had posted details of its dispute with the employee on its own site, most would accept that the employee had a legitimate grievance.

Employment contracts work both ways. If an employee acts in a manner which undermines the employer's trust, indicates disloyalty or is actively harmful to others within the work community, why should the employer be obliged to simply disregard it?

What about potential recruits? For firms screening applications, a blog may create a different impression from a CV. Cross-checking application details against blogs is becoming increasingly common. Since blogs are by nature in the public domain, an applicant can hardly claim breach of confidentiality.

While I don't dismiss the value of such cross-checking, caution must be the first rule. I would not customarily carry out an internet search on an applicant. The danger of entering blog sites is it inevitably takes a prospective employer into areas that are, quite appropriately, no-go areas at the recruitment stage, such as marital status, religion, sexual orientation or even age.

If it were known an employer had delved into such sites, an unsuccessful applicant might jump to the - probably incorrect - conclusion that such information had been taken into account in rejecting their application.

Despite this, employers are entitled to use blog-based information for business purposes. Entries in a personal blog are in the public domain, so bloggers would be well advised to remember this.

• Kirk Tudhope is a partner at Ledingham Chalmers.