Firing bloggers, Part II – challenges and opportunities of employee-bloggers

In an earlier post, I wrote about the unfortunate stories of a couple of employee-bloggers whose blog posts led directly to termination of their employment.

Certainly, most employee-bloggers would prefer that their blogging not have such a result. I believe it is also in the interest of employers to prevent situations that would lead to such a result. This can be accomplished only if employers and their employees are on the same page concerning what is and is not permissible blogging by employees.
At best, employee blogging can be a win-win situation, and even if not, it need not become a reason for termination.

Excuse me for another rather lengthy post, but this is an important topic. Click over and read on for some thoughts on employee blogging and employer responses thereto. (I suspect a Part III will be coming, with more concrete suggestions for the peaceful coexistence of employees and employers in the blogosphere.)

Bloggers in general strike me as a creative, intelligent, self-motivated, and hard-working bunch. (Indeed, I suggest that if you can't be described this way, you will either never start a blog, or will not successfully maintain one for any significant duration.) These are obviously characteristics that most employers would value in an employee.

Further, employee-blogging often takes place at -- and crosses over -- the border between our personal lives and opinions and our workplace duties and personas. Increasingly, progressive employers, particularly in tech industries, are seeing positive PR and marketing value in blogs that are corporate-sponsored or are openly written from the perspective of a company executive or employee. Indeed, there are even blogs on this subject, like Business Blog Consulting and Real Lawyers Have Blogs, where you can read extensively about the value and opportunities of blogs for businesses.

There is a potential problem with corporate-sponsored blogs -- people who read blogs are generally looking for the personal expression of the ideas, thoughts, and interests of one or more individuals. As soon as a particular blog is seen as merely another outlet for the marketing department of an impersonal corporation -- or large law firm, for that matter, it will lose much of its appeal and credibility.

As Job Stuff, Stephen Harris' Blog for your Career put it:

Blogging has grown up. Once the domain of teenagers sharing their personal lives online to friends and onlookers, now big business is stepping in. On this Blog and others in the job seeking space, there are links to corporations that have adopted the use of Blogs as a means of sharing their cultural environment, warts and accolades. . . The economy is shifting and corporations are entering the mode of "selling" themselves to attract the right people. Blogs are an ideal way of meeting this objective.

However, to be successful, the Corporate Blog needs credibility and the author must be willing to share not only the great and good, but also some of the “less good” aspects of the company. It must be real or it will come across as a cheesy infomercial.

One notorious story of a business running afoul of this credibility principle is the "Raging Cow" episode, described as follows by Rick Bruner:

Dr. Pepper / 7 Up came out with a new flavored milk product called Raging Cow, which it sought to give hip legitimacy to by reaching out to blogs. It did so, via its online marketing agency Richards Interactive, by creating its own blog and by inviting a group of young bloggers to be briefed on the product, whom it encouraged to blog about the product. . . . [W]here it fell afoul of the blogosphere was that it then asked those young bloggers not to mention that they had been briefed about the product, as if their sudden new enthusiasm for flavored milk was purely their own idea.

Hardcore bloggers . . . went ballistic at this attempt to corrupt their integrity of blogs, and for weeks, even months, it seemed all you heard on certain blogs was vitriol against Dr. Pepper.

Credibility, freedom, and individuality are all hugely important in the blogosphere, and the occasional "warts and all" commentary by an executive or employee can powerfully demonstrate and establish these characteristics. Conversely, if an organization ruthlessly squelches these characteristics in a corporate or employee blog in an effort to present a squeaky clean public relations image, the blog is likely to wind up lacking credibility, as well as lacking the freedom, individuality, and personal flavor that might otherwise draw a loyal readership.

Many blogs, likely including the ones that resulted in termination of the employees featured in my previous post, have quite small and specialized readerships. The potential negative impact on corporate image of particular employee-blogger commentary should be considered with this in mind, in addition to the above consideration (that some negativity keeps the blog real).

A blog posting is not necessarily the equivalent of a comment to a newspaper or TV reporter -- although it certainly is out there in cyberspace for all to see, you can only see it if you find it. The flip side is that the blogs do exist in a blogosphere that can very quickly spread the word and geometrically increase a particular blog's readership in the event of a controversy, particularly one viewed as involving unfair corporate censorship. With Delta and "Queen of Sky," this is precisely what occurred.

This is by no means to say that companies should adopt an "anything goes" policy with regard to employee-bloggers. But the matter should be handled with sensitivity and care. Some useful suggestions are found in "Business Weblogs Are Double-Edged" by Michael Gartenberg (Computerworld):

The things you need to consider fall into three areas.

1. Know what's being said about your company on other people's weblogs. . . If you're not using a tool like PubSub or Feedster to see what's being said about you and to monitor your company and brands, you're behind the times. . . .If there's negative buzz, you want to be able to pick up on the discussions early and get ahead of the issue.

2. Go slowly when creating official corporate blogs. . . . [B]usinesses that do so need to establish guidelines. . . Establishing policies for company bloggers and then knowing who is saying what are critical steps. . . .

3. Establish guidelines for workers who identify themselves as company employees while doing personal blogging. This is the trickiest situation of all. Independent bloggers who identify their employers on their weblogs had better know what the consequences will be at work. For example, in many industries, employees may not know that there are regulatory issues that mean certain things can't be spoken about casually. [I]t's important for every business to extend its policies to include guidelines on what can and can't be said in personal weblogs. . .

In some respects, those of us charged with making or advising upon employers’ decisions regarding such matters should be mindful that technology does not automatically change everything. Disciplining or discharging employees for blog postings is really a high-tech variant of the familiar issue of punishment of employees for off-duty conduct.

Classically, in the arena of collective bargaining "just cause" arbitration, such conduct could not be the basis for discipline or discharge unless there was an "injurious effect on the business [that was] . . . "reasonable and discernible and not merely speculative." (Elkouri & Elkouri, How Arbitration Works (BNA 6th ed. 2003) at 639).

Viewed in this light, Queen of Sky posing for photos in her uniform is not that different than an employee engaging in some other embarrassing or questionable off-duty conduct in company uniform, such as having a few drinks too many at a bar.

Polar Polly commenting on an imperfection in the idyllic landscape is not that different than an employee admitting off-duty that her company’s product has some weaknesses (whose doesn’t?). Although the "just cause" principle quoted above is not applicable as a matter of law to most employees, who can be terminated at will, it provides a guideline for employers to consider.

How offensive was the conduct? Queen of Sky was not fully or partially nude nor overtly sexual in her photos. How public was the conduct? Queen’s readership stats might be relevant here.

I would view her conduct under both these criteria as more analogous to getting obnoxiously drunk at the corner tavern and propositioning numerous customers than to appearing as a Playboy centerfold. If the former is a termination offense, she should have been terminated, if not, not.

Is there any evidence of a discernible negative impact on the business -- or even a speculative one? It is far from clear that Queen’s blog actually discouraged anyone from flying Delta or from seeking employment with Delta. The photos might actually encourage some (primarily male) customers who like the now-old-fashioned idea of flying an airline with attractive young stewardesses (oops -- I mean flight attendants). Perhaps some of her comments could be said to have a potentially negative impact on employee morale, but so does firing her under these circumstances.

So how is this analysis affected by the fact these (now former) employees committed their infractions via blogs, rather than engaging in other off-duty conduct? In an interesting way.

Obviously, it may have made their conduct more public, hence more damaging to the company’s image, which no doubt was a significant factor in their respective employers’ decisions. I mean, isn’t it like going on TV? Broadcasting that nastiness all over the Internet, for all to see?

This instinctive reaction fundamentally misapprehends the nature of the blogosphere. There are millions of blogs (one estimate http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/3162.asp puts the number of blogs worldwide at 4 million and the number of readers at 13 to 14 million). [link to estimate]; most probably have regular readerships below 100. The actions of Queen of Sky and Polar Polly -- and all the others who post what are essentially personal diaries that may at times reflect unfavorably upon aspects of their work lives -- are not remotely comparable to giving a TV interview or writing a letter to the editor (or complaining to a union or government agency). In most cases, such blogging will simply not have any impact on the reputation of the employer. Were the Queen’s photos being rapidly forwarded throughout the blogosphere fast as a virus? Not until she got fired.

Which is when the power of the blogosphere that is -- and should be -- frightening to companies kicked in. Once people are outraged about something, it WILL spread like a virus, as the Queen’s story has (just google keywords Queen and Sky). And now she IS giving TV interviews.

A further point is that these employers may have misapprehended the potentially positive PR impact of the blog posts themselves. For example, Polar Polly produced a blog that may have made a visit to the region whose tourism she was promoting for her regular employment appear quite attractive and interesting to readers -- despite the occasional "wart."

None of which is to say that employees should not be careful about blog posts that might offend their employer, or that employers should not be concerned about truly inappropriate blogging, such as that which discloses trade secrets.

But just as it is probably preferable (and more realistic) for many employers to place guidelines on nonbusiness email and internet use at work than to absolutely bar it, it is probably preferable for many employers to develop guidelines. More on this later.