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Work and Facebook
I work for a major supermarket chain in Britain (Asda, which is owned by Walmart, which you Americans will have heard of) and today I notice a leaflet on the tables in the canteen.
This leaflet was about how they will not accept current employees using blogs and social network sites to slag Asda off as it will damage the public image of Asda (Personally I think the fact they are owned by an "evil" company is more than enough to damage their image to those that care.) Which is fair enough, a company has a right to protect it's image and if you work for a company it isn't the best idea to slate them in public.
Where Facebook comes in is that they are clearly referring to it as there is a group on there called "I work for Asda and it make's me want to die" and I thought that this raised an interesting question about how work places use these things to spy on their workers. I know that many places will look you up if you are in an interview to makesure you're not a crazy person. Somehow taking to spying on your lower level staff when you are the 2nd biggest supermarket in the country seems to be a bit low and the thought that is someone's job makes it even sadder.
What do you guys think? Should it be okay for companies to use these sites to spy on their staff and if they do should they be able to use that information to disciple people for their actions outside of work?
Personally it doesn't affect me as all my settings are to friends only anyway and I don't hate the job enough to make such comments (although now it seems like they have challenged me to).
This leaflet was about how they will not accept current employees using blogs and social network sites to slag Asda off as it will damage the public image of Asda (Personally I think the fact they are owned by an "evil" company is more than enough to damage their image to those that care.) Which is fair enough, a company has a right to protect it's image and if you work for a company it isn't the best idea to slate them in public.
Where Facebook comes in is that they are clearly referring to it as there is a group on there called "I work for Asda and it make's me want to die" and I thought that this raised an interesting question about how work places use these things to spy on their workers. I know that many places will look you up if you are in an interview to makesure you're not a crazy person. Somehow taking to spying on your lower level staff when you are the 2nd biggest supermarket in the country seems to be a bit low and the thought that is someone's job makes it even sadder.
What do you guys think? Should it be okay for companies to use these sites to spy on their staff and if they do should they be able to use that information to disciple people for their actions outside of work?
Personally it doesn't affect me as all my settings are to friends only anyway and I don't hate the job enough to make such comments (although now it seems like they have challenged me to).
Comments
This is something I also see wrong with the world where people seek to quell the symptoms rather than fix the problem.
I used to work eight hours a week at an ASDA (Killingbeck, Leeds) and while the work was horrendously boring, the people were nice and I can't see how ASDA could have made anything much better. How does one motivate a workforce who are payed little to do monotonous work for hours on end? When I got a really bad case of the winter blues last year I stopped going. I'm now setting up a computer help company.