A question came up on an HR discussion list I’m on. The poster asked how she could find out if an employee is “bashing” the company on an online blog. Several different answers came up, such as searching Google and others talked about other employees coming forward. It suddently occurred to me that the answer was right under my nose. Although I’m sure my friends would shudder to hear me suggesting this, Technorati is the best way to determine whether or not an employee is “bashing” the company (or at least violating company policy) as they are dedicated solely to blogs. All the employer has to do is type in the name of the company and voila – all the blogs referencing the company name appear, as if by magic. Now I’m personally not aware of any HR professionals making a habit of this, but it is a good tool to have, particularly if you are aware of a disgruntled employee (or are made aware of such employee). Violation of policy evidenced on a website could make the difference between discipline and termination.
Now I’m not trying to set up any employee into being dooced but as I’ve stated before, there is a responsibility on both sides to act within their respective boundaries. And where there’s smoke there’s fire. If an employee is complaining about their job onsite then it’s likely that they are also complaining about it online. The best you can do as the employer is address the situation as you would in any other policy violation situation. And hope for the best in this litigious society. Otherwise, you may become the next employer who fired someone for blogging. Ha!
Lori, there is an even better method of doing this. With Technorati and Pubsub you can setup “watchlists” that will continually process new blog posts and when your term appears send you the post in an RSS feed. Many people do this to keep track of when people mention their names, or link to their sites. I have been tracking content about my employers like this for about 9 months now.