Australian law firm urges clients to adopt employee blogging policies

In its latest newsletter, Baker & MacKenzie says:

The democratic nature of the blog is a big risk factor for corporate users. Blogs can cause problems in that they often bypass normal approval processes for public comments. The live nature of blogs can push organisations to make overly hasty announcements.

The suggested policies include:

• outline who is entitled to blog: whether all employees may blog or only specified personnel (for example, those in certain positions or who have attended appropriate training sessions);
• Ideally, the policy should require the employee to use a disclaimer on the blog to this effect;
• inform employees of the relevant authorisation processes for the publishing of blogs (particularly marketing blogs);
• notify employees of any monitoring of the blogging of employees that the company will carry out in accordance with the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW);
• provide that the company’s confidential information must not be disclosed;
• provide that employees must not make use of the company’s intellectual property without obtaining authorization;
• require employees to ensure the accuracy of any information published;
• make employees aware of the law of defamation and prohibit employees from making defamatory statements and/or statements that are contrary to the strategic and commercial interests of the enterprise;
• prohibit employees from making discriminatory comments; and
• prohibit employees from using blogs to engage in illegal conduct.

Patrick Fair (email), the partner responsible, was recently in the Business Sunday piece on blogging.

Good advice and yet another sign that blogging is going corporate mainstream.

Comments

[/pd]

one word - NICE :)_

[Jane Genova]

This is excellent. Covers all bases and the tone indicates the serious nature of public communications.

[Jeremy Ballenger]

'...the tone indicates the serious nature of public communications.'

... and the serious nature of those who take themselves too seriously.

Along with the likely demise of public language and conversation. Ask yourself this - how many posts preceded by a disclaimer are you going to read before clicking that left mouse button?

And when did it become necessary for someone to have received 'the appropriate training' before engaging in conversation?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for organisations 'blogging smart', but a policy like this isn't blogging going mainstream. It's blogging going corporate. Turn it up.

[David Jacobson]

As a counterpoint to the
"prudent" legal view, it is worth reading US legal blogger Denise Howell's
approach in Blogs: Least Risky Of All? at
http://betweenlawyers.corante.com/archives/2006/03/06/blogs_least_risky_of_all.php
She suggests that of all the various communication tools available to employees, whether while on the job or off the job or both, blogging may actually be the least risky and most innocuous from a corporate risk management standpoint.
Would Patrick Fair propose that all of his guidelines should also apply to all telephone calls or games of golf?

[Santana]

Yeah, I'm agreed with whatever written in this blog. It's a true fact shown in this blog is that, a blog can cause problem for an organization if it's confidential issues are revealed to the public. And particularly in this regard there is a point described which I think is the proper one and it should be implemented. That is "outline who is entitled to blog: whether all employees may blog or only specified personnel (for example, those in certain positions or who have attended appropriate training sessions)".

[Daniel]

"The democratic nature of the blog is a big risk factor for corporate users"!!! Hmmm... If such then this is going to be a big issue in the future. It was a good posting. Till yet I was thinking that blogs are really helpful source to promote or publish something. But yup it's equally true that it can be hazardous if a company's confidential matter is going to disclose through such medium. So for preventing those kind of mis-happenings the points that have been described in this post are really appreciable.