Employer clamp down on social networking sites

EMPLOYERS are increasingly choosing to block access to popular social networking sites – and they’re right to, according to lawyers Halliwells.

The Sheffield-based law firm said that recent analysis of more than a billion web requests process by ScanSafe – a web security provider – confirmed a 20% increase in the number of customers blocking social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in the last six months.

Currently, 76% of companies are choosing to block social networking and it is now a more popular category to block than online shopping (52%), weapons (75%), alcohol (64%), sports (51%) and webmail (58%).

Diarmuid Deeney, an employment law specialist with Halliwells, said that he agreed with the crackdown in principle adding that the vast majority of employees have online access at home where they can log into social networking sites in their own time.

“The key issue here is productivity, particularly in these difficult times,” he said.

“No employee wants to feel they’re being policed and such a feeling certainly isn’t conducive to a healthy working environment, but I can understand why many employers are feeling the need to crack down.”

Mr Deeney said that if not used for business purposes, social networking sites can be a severe drain on bandwidth as they constantly refresh draining network capacity and on occasion can cause a company’s entire system to crash.

“In addition, businesses can be exposed to malicious software,” he added.

Moreover, social networking sites can be used to make derogatory and defamatory remarks about co-workers, managers or employers, which causes fricton.

“If employees are regularly logging on during working hours purely to socialise with friends, businesses are entitled to enforce measures that limit non-productive web use,” advised Mr Deeney.