The officers were on a ‘boys’ weekend outside of working hours and obviously unrelated to their roles at Wandsworth Prison when the photos were taken. The pictures, which were posted on Facebook, were only brought to prison bosses’ attention some two months later.
This case again highlights the importance of having a social media policy in place in order to facilitate disciplinary action in these situations. The prison’s policy was clear on what was and was not acceptable, and in particular emphasised the possibility of sanctions where the prison was brought into disrepute. In this case there was reasonable evidence of this, particularly if certain reports of the incident are to be believed which suggest that the t-shirts the slogans were printed on to were Wandsworth prison t-shirts! Whilst it isn’t the case that every photo needs to have the employer’s name on it to be reputationally damaging to the employer, there does need to be some link back for such arguments to be reasonably run. For example, if the officers identified themselves as working for the prison on their Facebook pages or if photo albums included the name of their employer.
Although it is difficult to completely prevent employees posting ‘unfortunate’ pictures or messages on the internet relating the business, by having a policy in place which sets outs out expectations and possible disciplinary action for breach, the employer will be doing all it can to minimise their occurrence and enable itself to take swift action where necessary.