As We Are Marketplace

This is Bernadette Sukley's first blog with As We Are.

Read Bernadette's blog Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.  In Bernadette's blog, she will be publishing stories, articles and observations about life as a woman. She will be exploring the world with a fresh perspective, covering a wide variety of topics relevant to her life, and your's.

 Welcome Bernadette!

Catherine Sanderson is out of a job.

An expat, originally from York, England, she worked in Paris. She started her website on a whim one day, after reading The Guardian's guide to blogs (or web logs) and becoming engrossed in relating the adventures of La Belle de Jour.

Her website attracted thousands of visitors who learned about her French husband, her precocious toddler, affectionately called “Tadpole” and her job with a British firm in Paris. But her less-than-kind comments about her boss combined with the irretractable attitude of the miffed high-ranking personnel landed her a pink slip or dismissal due to faute grave (gross misconduct). Her employer covered its tracks by saying it wasn’t just her comments (which were technically anonymous), but Sanderson did play hooky, used company time to blog and used company property for personal reasons. Though she never mentioned the company by name, never mentioned anyone by name--they found out. “And never was my professionalism called into question,” says Sanderson. To this day she has no idea who “turned her in.”

Blogs are becoming more common in the workplace for a number of reasons. First, many individuals (expats among them) reach out to the global community for professional reasons; to chat about new products and services, difficulties with a particular project or trying get a handle on the latest work issues. Second, companies find blogs a useful way for employees to complain and vent without having to worry about mutinous behavior. Lastly, blogs are the latest craze in IT. Rather than ignore them, savvy firms are posting websites with blogs for both employees and the public to engage. But the majority of blogs are daily logs—public dairies, which relate personal details and secrets best kept unsaid.

According to Kevin Grossman, Chief Operating Officer for Fisher Vista, LLC, an international marketing firm for the human resource industry, the big tech companies are requesting that employees blog. Companies like Sun Systems practically require employees to blog on the company’s website. “There’s value to blogs,” says Grossman. “The more their employees write about their products and personnel, the better for the company.” He notes that blogs inadvertently direct traffic to the company’s website and provide “free” advertising. But warns that every employee should know that company-hosted blogs are monitored. “Companies have to protect themselves,” says Grossman. “The sharing of company secrets can get you fired immediately.”

If you have your own blog--use common sense, says Grossman. “Don’t blog on company time.” Work at work, play at home. Don’t be disrespectful of bosses on your blog. “Sure a lot of companies let a lot of negative comments slide, and frankly, I have no problem with someone who feels the need to vent, but if the problem is that bad, there are appropriate channels in human resources that the person can go through.” Although the HR department has the unsavory reputation for policing and whistle blowing, Grossman believes that it should be a safe haven for employees to air grievances. “But,” he says, “in the end, you have to remember, it’s about the company—it’s about business.”

Bloggers have been fired from Starbucks, Delta Air Lines, Friendster, Google, and Microsoft. In a 2004 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 3 percent of human resource professionals reported disciplining an employee for blogging. Freedom of speech isn’t the freedom to say anything you want about the company or its personnel. And the awful reality is that not everyone is on your side--you’re more likely to be outted by a co-worker or even a “friend” than the company’s IT manager. “You could be terminated for blogging inappropriately if it violated company policy,” says Grossman. “For example, if you revealed proprietary company information, defamed or slandered the employer or other employees.” Grossman admits however, that being fired outright for blogging is a rare occurrence. Most bloggers are able to remain anonymous, so complaints and insults float unrestrained in cyberspace. “You can’t be fired just for blogging, it's still pretty uncommon. There’s got to be other problems with the employee.”

Some human resource professionals encourage honesty, advising employees to alert their supervisor of their blogs or their intention to start one (for business or personal reasons). Make sure you know the lay of the land before you disclose your website, you could be tossing a red blanket in front of a bull. “I’d advise companies to strongly urge their blogging employees to be positive,” says Grossman. Because it’s an HR nightmare to deal with finger-pointing on a company blog. If it does get to a point where the blog has gotten out of control, the staff needs to sit down and review the guidelines and restrictions, which hopefully will have already been in place. In May, IBM released blogging guidelines for its nearly 330,000 employees. But they can kiss anonymity goodbye: Blogging employees must identify themselves and their roles at IBM. Microsoft has no official guidelines.

Blogging is testing human resources and the law. Several fired employees are suing their former companies for the injustice of being fired simply for being speaking candidly. In early winter 2002, an American woman, Heather Armstrong, was fired from a software firm after complaining in profane terms about the company on her blog (www.dooce.com), the company knew about the site for a year. While she never challenged her discharge, some legal experts suggested her case would have had merit as wrongful termination since her right to free speech was seriously trampled upon. And as with Catherine Sanderson’s case, neither woman was given any warning nor did their respective companies avail themselves of the proper procedures to correctly fire an employee—i.e., warnings, probation, complaint filing. Other legal analysts argue there’s nothing private about the public domain of the Internet. Both women’s blogs (dooce.com and petiteanglaise.com) are still active. And now UrbanDictionary.com defines dooced as “losing your job for something you wrote on your blog.”

Oddly enough, dooced employees may just be the perfect people to help create guidelines and policies for blog-challenged companies. Former Google product manager, Mark Jen, now works for Plaxo (a consumer Internet service) and just created the company’s blog guidelines. On his own blog, Jen has wisely nestled a disclaimer in his profile column, which says, in part: “…content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted … not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo…”

Blogging 101 

 
Resources
http://www.blogger.com
http://www.problogs.com
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004725.html (A good resource for HR. Jeremy Wright, fired blogger and founder of InsideBlogging, a blog consulting company.)