Employers and social networking sites

A press release by the TUC about employers and how they may want to respond to their employees accessing social networking sites on work time seems to have created almost as much news as the prison officers strike yesterday.

The press release itself - Employers need to face up to the age of Facebook - appears to be about the TUC having its say on a matter that has generated quite a bit of news over the past year or so.

The TUC is certainly not suggesting accessing social networking sites should be a god given right, and instead, it is suggesting "that sensible employers, realising that their staff spend much of their waking hours in work and lead busy lives, should be trusted to spend a few minutes of their lunchbreak 'poking' their friends or making plans for outside work."

The TUC has also offered employees some idea of their rights on the matter - see Online social networking and work.

Over at the BBC's Have Your Say social networking and work appears to be a very popular debating point with around 600 comments left at the last count - probably all posted from workplaces!

I first noticed the story in The Times - see Get a life and allow your staff to use Facebook, TUC tells bosses (Christine Buckley, Frances Gibb and Michael Herman), and worth reading for the polarity of opinion on the subject.

I don't think this will be last time we hear of social networking and employment.

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