Facebook and work - what are the boundaries?

[WonderingaboutFB]

The MNer who has been dismissed after one single comment is making me wonder about exactly what one can and can't say safely on Facebook about work (and indeed, on MN, come to that). Obviously the only safe thing would be to avoid ever talking about work on social networking sites, ever.
However for most people work is a big part of their lives and it can be weird never mentioning something that is clearly a huge part of your life.
I am finding what happened to the MNer in question quite chilling because it was just so final and ruthless after such an easy (and understandable) error, and she had never been in trouble before. Free speech is an important principle, but when it comes to the workplace should we all in fact be all tra la la, smiley faces, only ever saying anything good about our employer?

So I am wondering about the following hypothetical scenarios and whether any MNers with HR experience, or indeed anyone, has any views.

1. Suppose you didn't yourself say your boss was a cow but you said something factual about what she'd done ('My boss won't let me work from home') and your mates all came on and commented 'What a cow!'

Could you be held responsible for that?

1. Suppose you were pretty outspoken, thinking your settings were private, and then FB changed something or there was an error and it got made public? (This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds given that Amazon did once make an error so that all the anonymous reviews had names attached to them for a day.) Could they just say 'well you should have known it might not stay private?'

1. Suppose something bad happened to you at work - say you got sexually harassed - and you posted about it, could you get in trouble (let's say a person you thought was your friend but wasn't shops you) because admitting that this kind of thing goes on in your workplace makes the place look bad? Let's say the harassment was proved - could you get in trouble anyway?

1. Suppose you bitched about colleagues on MN and your enemies found it, could you defend yourself by saying it was anonymous? Or would they be able to argue that it obviously wasn't anonymous because they were able to find it?

1. Are social networking sites a special case? Or could you equally get in trouble for criticising your colleague or workplace in a Christmas round robin?!

If you would write the exact same comments on a big billboard on your house that would be available for anyone in the world to view 24 hours a day for the whole of your lifetime and beyond, then go ahead and put it on a social networking site.

You don't use FB and don't give much away on MN then I take it Whoops?

I know, I know!
Don't use facebook, it's the real name thing, posting your every move and photos (don't post those here) and when I do post something here more personal rather than just objective comment I do change it so it would be darn hard to identify me.
I am in no doubt that if someone wanted to find out my real identity from my mn then they could, but there would be less clues than facebook because it's not an in your face page all about me where employers, snoopers, voyeurs and exes can drop on by to see what I'm up to!
Btw I know someone who came a cropper at work from writing quite lame moany stuff about work.

did you see that Tonight or similar programme I think it was last week about this sort of thing?
They hacked into journo's fb account and managed to get bank details mother's maiden name and all sorts of stuff using only clues from the site.
Didn't watch it all but it is scary.

MN is watching us!

I know several employers who look on FB when someone applies for a job. It is essentially in the public domain.

Like in so many things don't say anything to anyone that you would not say to them directly.

didn't see that Whoops but I can imagine mother's maiden name might be a doddle to work out just from the names of relatives in your friends list.

You see, I'm wondering if 'don't say anything you wouldn't say directly' is even careful enough. eg in my 3rd example, suppose you were a feisty sort of person and would happily say 'That behaviour is sexual harassment' to the perpetrator and happily tell all your friends and colleagues about it, might you still get in trouble with the organisation simply because it is there in the ether on a social networking site?

Plus, would you be sacked for gross misconduct for losing your cool and calling your boss a bitch to her face? (I have no idea because I don't generally act like that!) Or if you apologised at once and it had happened in a stressful situation would you be more likely to get away with doing it in RL than online?

changing key details on MN is an excellent idea, btw.

I am more concerned about my employees surfing FB during work hours. We have recently had to ask our staff to stop doing this. It was affecting the smooth running of work as their minds were elsewhere

The MNer in question has already said her company has a policy on Internet missuse. She was aware of it and she breached it.
Simple as.

I work somewhere with a similarly robust policy and to be honest it's never occurred to me to do something so silly anyway. Even if it's 'factual' slagging your boss or your employer or anyone off in public isn't a good idea.

I know what she did was a clear breach. I'm wondering about what happens in the grey areas.
A fair few of my friends' postings are about work, mostly perfectly harmless, there are one or two who slag off bosses, colleagues and customers quite explicitly. I'm assuming their privacy settings are safe (the one who is worst is fortunately quite techno-savvy and is not the type to make a mistake about her settings but I wonder if she could get into trouble if something happened to FB which was not her fault.)
Another one recently didn't have his contract renewed despite being vg at his job and a lot of his friends then slagged off his institution in the comments section.
More commonly, a lot of them moan generally about the professions they work in and things that are happening in those professions, which is nothing like as clearcut as being rude about individuals but I wonder if that is dodgy too?

a lot of them moan about long hours - again, is that dangerous?
I suppose my question is about things that seem harmless but may not be - it's fairly clear that if you openly slag off someone by name in public you will be in trouble. Not unreasonably.

Any of the scenarios described in the original posting I think would be a hint that the person posting these status updates is either naive, or stupid or both.

Posting about work related issues on facebook is simply asking for trouble and I don't really understand why anyone would feel the need to in the first place.

If I want to vent, I vent it somewhere where it can't be traced back to me, and if I seek advice I certainly would try to keep the details as anonymised as possible.

I think sacking the poster from the other thread was a very harsh reaction going by the details from the thread, however I think the employer was right to hold a disciplinary.

Quite a few of my ex-colleagues make comments about their working day which might be taken badly, and acted on, by management. However, considering the manager has a photo on her facebook account of herself sitting naked on a toilet (with no privacy settings, and a so-called professional, job in the NHS dealing directly with patients), then I think that the management can't be really that concerned.

However, in more professionally run organisations, people obviously need to be very, very careful.