Do your employees Tweet? Either on behalf of the business, or on their own account? It is likely that some of them do. In which case, it is worth covering this (and other social media sites) in your IT policy.

Mr Laws was employed by Game Retail Ltd as a risk and loss prevention investigator. He was responsible for approximately 100 stores. He had a personal twitter account, which he used to follow some of his stores and he allowed the stores to follow him. And so, although his Twitter account did not specifically associate him with Game Retail, a link could be made. He made no attempt to use the restriction settings and so his tweets were publicly visible.

Mr Laws was dismissed by Game Retail as a result of offensive and abusive tweets that he posted about the towns that his stores were in. He claimed that his dismissal was unfair. The Employment Tribunal held that it was unfair and that Game Retail's response had been unreasonable. However, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that due to the public nature of Twitter and the risk to reputational damage and the potential for the tweets to cause offence, then the dismissal could be fair. The matter has gone back to a new Employment Tribunal to be reconsidered.

This highlights the importance of setting out in a clear policy what online behaviour will not be tolerated by an employer and the circumstances in which an employee may be dismissed – even for activity on their own personal accounts and in their own time.