Social Media related cases can be very difficult for employers to handle.  In schools it is not unusual to come across unfavourable comments posted on Facebook – sometimes work related and sometimes not but never the less, sometimes offensive or simply inappropriate. Similar concerns apply to Twitter.

Social Media related cases can be very difficult for employers to handle.  In schools it is not unusual to come across unfavourable comments posted on Facebook – sometimes work related and sometimes not but never the less, sometimes offensive or simply inappropriate. Similar concerns apply to Twitter.

Social media can sometimes cause so many problems! In Game Retail Limited v Laws, an employee was dismissed for tweeting offensive comments.  The comments were not about the company and not made in work time. However, Game considered that the tweets were offensive and could be read by the public and his followers of 65 Game stores (his role included monitoring twitter feeds from the stores and he followed them and they followed his tweets not knowing he was an employee). Someone complained about offensive comments and a disciplinary process ensued. Gross misconduct was the result and the employee dismissed. The employment tribunal found that the dismissal was unfair as the tweets were not in the course of his employment and done on his own personal phone.

The Employment Appeals Tribunal referred it back for a new ET to consider as they felt the original tribunal had failed to consider the fact that stores following him and customers, could see the Tweets. One might ask if the original tribunal knew how Twitter works. There is therefore a potential that even if using their own equipment outside work, that offensive remarks could reflect on the business. Say this was a teacher – how might parents feel if little Jimmy’s teacher is making offensive remarks in the public domain!?