Tuesday, January 04, 2005
When Work Blogs Can Land You In Hot Water
Increasingly people are landing in hot water with employers over their work blogs. A new term – "dooced" - has even been coined to describe "losing your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, website, etc."
My own take on this is that, as in most aspects of life, there will always be people who do dumb things and get fired, so why blame blogging.
Most personal bloggers blog because it is therapeutic. But when you mention the organisation you work for in your blog, they may not take it too kindly if you project yourself (and them) in an “inappropriate” light, and many people actually support this stand.
Some comments:
- Freedom of speech has little or nothing to do with this. The truth is you surrender certain freedoms when you agree to take a paycheck.
- If she dissed her employer and fellow employees publicly, and it appears the did, she risked disiplinary action, including being fired... And make no mistake about it, a blog is a PUBLIC forum. If it were a personal journal, that would be much different.
Business bloggers need to keep a few tips in mind when they start a work blog, many of which are very well covered in the Corporate Blogging Primer and Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto.
Companies for their part, must accept that the world is moving on and must adopt the new technology and make guidelines, says the report Looming pitfalls of work blogs.
