In cyberspace no one can hear you scream
A recent tweet from Faruk Ates drew my attention. A workshop on upcoming.org for Human Resource people about blogging and the damages it does to business.
Let’s preface this all by talking about blogging. Whenever I post something on the internet, I do keep in mind what a family member or possible employer might think of it. This also depends on the context (e.g. the website and conversational thread) of course.
Now, as far as I can tell from the description of the workshop it doesn’t seem to concern someone who is blogging for the company, but rather an employee who just happens to have a blog. So, this means HR should care about something the employee does in his own time? Why?
Now if the person violates his contract by divulging company secrets, it seems to be a clear-cut legal case (even though I’m not a lawyer). What are these “tricky legal restrictions” one has to navigate? And let’s not even go into the whole mindset behind a phrase like “tricky legal restrictions”.
Then there is the case of “kvetching” (I just learned a new word) about fellow employees. How is this any different than complaining to your friends? Other than the fact that the complaint has a theoretical larger audience.
On the other side of the coin there is the twopointohmob climbing out of the woodwork to defend blogging and stuff, throwing links and stuff around as if these people are going to read it. Each trying to be more “open” than the last. Bah.
No one reads their damn blog anyway.