Companies to rewrite employment contracts to cover blogs

Interesting article in The Scotsman, Scotland’s National Newsaper, about the need for companies to rewrite employment contracts to cover blogs.

Noele McClelland, a leading Scottish employment lawyer, says court cases and complex legal battles emerging from dismissals of bloggers revealed that many employers are unprepared.

By their nature, blogs and online diaries set out to entertain or provoke, but the blog culture has overtaken existing employment and internet use policies.

The majority of these references may be responsible or relatively benign, but some highlight the blogger’s displeasure with their employer or colleagues. It may cause nothing more than a minor embarrassment, but at worst, it has the potential to affect the company’s entire corporate image.

If an employer relies on a good public image, they ought to be considering the potential effects of blogging on their business.

The point of the article is not to discourage blogging, just that companies should review and update existing internet, e-mail, disciplinary and data protection policies.