According to a survey conducted by The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in January 2005, three percent of over 279 randomly selected HR professionals reported that their company had disciplined employees for blogging.
This may seem like a small number, but as the number of blogs in the United States grows (about 8 million American adults have created blogs, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project), it's safe to say that the issue has a good chance of coming up at some point during your career.
The following tips can help you make sure the contents of your blog template are less likely to garner unwanted attention from employers.
Review company policies on nondisclosure. Company policies on nondisclosure can apply to employees' blogs, says Jen Jorgensen, a spokesperson for SHRM. A standard employer nondisclosure agreement requires that employees refrain from disclosing trade secrets, confidential information, or any other proprietary information. Examples of such information often include methods, inventions, financial data, customer lists, and research projects.
Maya Wallace, a 27-year-old graduate student whose blog template is titled "Postcards from Sacramento," emphasizes the importance of refraining from blogging about proprietary company information.
Maya admits to having "made allusions to the location of my office, and to the nature of my work." Maya also notes that she never writes about anything that could violate her employer's terms of employment or any work-related writings that could be construed as "obscene."
Don't create an entry about work in your blog template. As the line is blurred between what is or is not appropriate to blog about in regard to work, the safest approach may be to refrain from including any information related to your work in your blog template.
That may be difficult to do, as blogs are autobiographical in nature and work is an integral part of modern life.
Janice James, Executive Director of Pat Taylor and Associates, a personnel agency based in Washington, D.C., advises employees who insist on blogging about work to strictly comply with confidentiality agreements. For topics that fall outside of this category, Mrs. James admonishes bloggers to use common sense and avoid writing about anything that they wouldn't want their bosses to see.
Human Resources Training and Coursework
If personnel issues such as these interest you, you should consider taking a human resources course. A variety of courses are available to prepare students to become HR professionals in the areas of management, policy development, recruitment, employee training, and other areas of HR.Training programs and individual courses can be pursued part-time as part of a distance training program, providing a convenient way to obtain additional skills. Finally, if you love to blog and are interested in human resource issues, why not try to create a blog template that addresses pressing HR issues such as this one? You would perhaps be one of the few blogs on the web that have entries on not blogging about work.
Sources
- The Pew Internet & American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/
- The Society for Human Resource Management. http://www.shrm.org/
