Hotmail, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other e-mail and social networking sites are often a headache for employers. Employees are entitled to a private life but there are occasions when an employees personal email or posting, even when done outside of working hours and from home, can be actionable by the employer.
In a recent case, Gosden v Lifeline Project Ltd (LPL), Mr Gosden worked for LPL as a Prison Drug worker. He forwarded an email from home one weekend to a co worker within the prison service who in turned then forwarded it on to someone else within the Prison service. The email contained racist and sexist comments and images containing nudity.
The prison service excluded Mr Gosden from all of its prisons in Yorkshire and Humberside and LPL dismissed Mr Gosden on the grounds that he breached the companies equal opportunities policy and had damaged the company's reputation and its relationship with the prison service.
The Tribunal found the dismissal to be fair. The email was offensive and was sent to LPLs biggest clients and even though the email had been sent in Mr Gosden’s own time and from his own email, the email was a chain e-mail and so therefore, the tribunal made it clear that it was intended to be forwarded to others. Private correspondence intended for Mr Yates's eyes only, may well have attracted privacy.
Again it is yet another example as to how employers need to ensure that any e-mail and Internet policy and disciplinary policy are clear and include reference to situations where even a personal e-mail may not be so personal if it comes into the public domain and has the potential of bringing the employer into disrepute. Equally any offensive comments on social networking sites about co workers could be classed as harassment.
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