In June Network World magazine published an article called, “Does your company have an official blogging policy?“

If you have found that one of your employees has already begun writing about your company in a blog and you’re not happy with his take on corporate life, you may well be within your right to pull the plug. Few states have laws that prevent an employee from an “at will” dismissal if he acts against his employer’s interests. But if you are going to release or discipline an employee over a blog, be gentle. You don’t want to irritate this person to the point that he conceals his true identity and uses your “tightening of the reins” as food for fight. You might be surprised how easy it is to conceal your identity and blog safely as an employee. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has several tips on how to do that on its “How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)” page (http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog-anonymously.php).

You also might consider the reason that an employee would feel the need to vent on a personal blog. Is your company’s culture such that employees have no way of suggesting change? If an employee is unhappy for one reason or another, does he have a means to voice the reasons behind his unhappiness at work without fear of losing his job?

An earlier — one might almost say ground-breaking — article, written by an unheralded genius is available here.

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Curt Hopkins