Usage of Social Media
To what extent employees can be
dismissed based on inappropriate
use of social media depends on the
national legislation. When it comes to
inappropriate use of social media, in
the U.S., the focus will be on whether
or not it is related to "concerted
activity." In Canada and in most
European countries, the reason given
for dismissal will be checked. In
Canada the criteria for inappropriate
use of social media are (1) breach of the
company policy, for instance, regarding
confidentiality, computer use or anti-
harassment and (2) damage to the
company. Other considerations taken
into account are whether it is a matter of
frequent inappropriate use or one time
inappropriate use only, and whether the
employee has been warned.
A court in Australia considered an
employee's 3,000 chat sessions in three
years sufficient for the termination of the
employment. In two recent decisions in
France, the courts ruled that employees
posting insulting comments about their
employers on a social media website
fined for the offense of public insult.
It was held that comments posted on a
social media site could not be considered
private, since the postings were not set to
be displayed only to friends.
This is not only an issue in France
but also in Switzerland where employees
must check the relevant privacy settings
before posting derogatory comments.
In France it was held that employees
must be made aware about the possible
sanctions and the consequences of
inappropriate postings in advance. On
the contrary, in the UK, an Employment
Tribunal held that the employee's
comments on Facebook were not in
private even though the employee had
set his privacy settings so that only
his Facebook friends could see them.
The Dutch court had the same line of
reasoning about an employee posting
an insulting remark about his employer
to his friends on Facebook. According
to the Dutch court, the term "friends"
is a very relative notion on the internet
because these friends can, and in this
case they did, forward the message very
easily. The employer's need to protect its