News: Contract Law
Employment law training 'must take Twitter into account'
23 April 2009
Employment law training must take into account the difficulties Twitter can present companies, an expert asserts.
Julia Gorham, senior associate at Allen and Overy, tells People Management that it is vital for human resources departments to be aware of the sites that staff access in order to prevent illicit disclosures.
She warns that attempts to monitor electronic usage fall under the IT security and dignity at work policies of the company in question and emphasises the need to make this clear to employees.
"It is essential that HR understands which networking sites staff can access, what monitoring facilities are available and what systems are in place for storing and searching electronic records, including micro-blogs," she tells the news provider.
Ms Gorham says both texts and instant messages fall under the category of documents and calls for firms to have systems to trawl through social networking sites to minimise the need for disclosure exercises.
In other news, Halliwells' Guy Guinan recently advised HRZone.co.uk that companies should prevent office romances through contractual clauses if they can justify these measures.
