Are your Employees Blogging?

• Posted by Geoffrey G. Gussis on August 17th, 2005


• Filed in Risk Management & Compliance

Are your employees blogging?  By making sure that your company and its bloggers are on the same page, you can ensure that blogging wil be a win-win situation for both parties. Michael P. Maslanka, the managing partner of the Dallas office of Ford & Harrison, has great tips for in-house counsel grappling with employee blogging issues:

"Blog culture — unrehearsed, real-time, authentic — leads to refreshing perspectives and, not infrequently, complimentary company commentary. Getting employees to reflect positively on the company is not hard. Develop a simple, nonthreatening blog policy that is a natural outgrowth of already existing electronic communications and Internet usage policies. Require a statement on the employee’s blog, such as "the views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer."

Tell the employees that they must not disclose (intentionally or inadvertently) a company’s confidential information or that of a third party, such as a customer, and give a few examples of what you mean. Ask the employee-bloggers to commit to not disparaging the company, its employees or its customers. Finally, no yakking away during quiet periods for publicly traded companies."

Read more at Law.com. Link: Legal Technology - The Right Response to Employee Blogs.