Any HR/Legal experts able to advise?

[CatAnnoyance]

Does anyone know if private conversations between two people on WhatsApp (on a private personal phone, not a work device) that are basically slagging off colleagues and complaining about how useless they are is deemed as misconduct if screenshots of the messages are submitted to management?

(I am genuinely asking for a friend believe it or not 😂)

It probably depends if the comments were justified! Management may equally be interested in the source of the complaining.

Possibly, it could bring the company into disrepute if distributed, so yeah,

Thanks both.

We had this issue at a place of work and it was deemed that WhatsApp came under the Social Media policy and the colleagues in question were issued disciplinary action.