After being sacked the chef took to Twitter and posted the following tweets using the company account which has 2000 followers: “Happy Christmas Everyone” “We would like to inform you that we have just fired our Head Chef” “Unfortunately he wanted to have a weekend off this month and Christmas Day this year for family commitments so we thought we would sack him” “Yeah a week before Christmas” “We don’t care that he has a 7 ½ month old baby daughter” “So come on down and continue to pay a premium for Australian Sirloins, New Zealand Lamb and everything else that is bought from Asda”
Now, if you are going to sack someone it’s a good idea to make sure they do not have access to your social media accounts as they could cause a lot of damage to your reputation. Make sure you are in charge of the passwords and before taking any action against an employee make sure you change them in case they try to log in and cause mischief. The article stated the chef didn’t hack into the company Twitter account as he had set it up himself with the permission of the company.
Whenever you have a member of staff posting onto your company social media accounts it would be a good idea to have a social media policy. This details what they can and can’t post on social media. The policy sets expectations for appropriate behaviour and ensures the employee will not cause any embarrassment to the company, will not post anything illegal and details what can and can’t be shared on the site. The policies can be as detailed as you like to ensure the employee has a good understanding of what is expected from them online and the content they share. You can also include rules regarding confidentiality.
At The Social Accelerators we are able to help you create a social media policy and strategy to ensure you limit the risk to your online reputation. If you need help regarding this subject please call us on 01245 791969 or email us at [email protected]
