Would you like feet with that burger?

We’ve warned both employers and employees on several occasions about how the misuse of social media can land you in hot water. Taking to facebook or twitter to have a moan about a colleague is unlikely to do you any favours when a colleague takes a screen print of the comments to the boss’ office.

But we wonder what an employee of fast food chain Burger King was thinking when he posted a photo on the internet of himself stepping in lettuce. The picture was captioned with ‘This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King’. As you can imagine there were some disgruntled customers that were appalled by the image! The GPS data was tracked so that the location of where the image had been taken could be pinpointed and subsequently emails and phone calls were directed to the Burger King in question.

©4Chan

Upon hearing the commotion, Burger King took action and dismissed three of its employees who were involved.

It goes to show the damage that can be done by clowning around at work and employees and employers take note: anything that is posted to the internet is public and can be seen by anyone, and used by anyone! Naturally, having a social media policy in place to work alongside a disciplinary policy will endeavour to combat this happening to you. Go to our website for more information: www.hrdept.co.uk

Unemployed youth: Disillusioned or misunderstood?

The HR Dept is disappointed and concerned to see that figures of youth unemployment have recently reached record highs. We recognise that the majority of unemployed 16-24 year olds do make every effort to get on the job ladder, but at the moment there are limited opportunities. However, Conservative politician Norman Tebbit has gone further and criticised the lack of ‘get up and go’ from UK graduates, sparking an interesting debate on motivation of the younger UK workforce at a time of high unemployment generally.

The reality is though, that the figures are likely to get worse before they get better. The Government will launch a £1 billion ‘youth contract’ to fund six month work placements for up 410,000 individuals. This is very positive, as it is so often the case that young workers have the theoretical knowledge but not the practical application. It has the potential to help build a younger worker’s confidence as everyone remembers their first day of work as it can be daunting stepping into an unknown environment! Once we know more about it, we will put more information out.

Find something you enjoy and are good at and you will hit the ground running

The critical point about younger workers disillusionment with the working world can be highlighted with some research we discovered recently - finding that a staggering 48% of people aged 16-24 said they would not work for a firm that prohibited social media use. Whether for work purpose or not, it shows a new trend of younger individuals looking to use social media in every part of their lives, whether it be personal or working.

Advice is to any young worker looking for their first role:

Look for something you want to get involved in or a role which you can match your skills against and present yourself as a positive, hard working and ambitious candidate and deliver on that promise.

Tweeting in the workplace: Do you have clear guidelines set?

Recent research by ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) found just over half of all workers (55%) now use social media sites at work, either on computers or mobile phones, costing British firms billions of pounds a year in lost productivity.

The problem is created when employees are spending time on personal profiles and pages when they should be working. What is of deeper concern however is when employees use social media platforms to speak negatively of their place of work or worse, their boss. Another study conducted showed almost 40% of British employees criticize their ‘workplace’ on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In addition, one in five admitted slandering their bosses on them.

There have been some high profile cases of employees being dismissed for bringing the company into disrepute because of comments either about work or colleagues on these social media platforms and The HR Dept is certainly dealing with more cases where employers have discovered tweets or messages which have caused issues within the workplace. The key of course, is communicating to all staff what your IT and Social Media policy is!

The HR Dept has written an IT/Social Media policy for employers containing guidelines on how to manage employees in this complicated area. If interested, contact your local HR Dept for more information.

www.hrdept.co.uk