With the rise of Business a corporate policy the topic of employee blogging always comes up. What are their rights? Should companies allow employees to blog about their work? If they don’t should people think negatively of them? I always stated that the blogging policy should be very clear but I understand 100% if a company doesn’t allow it. Why? Employees don’t realize the potential results of their actions and it isn’t their decision to make. Finally someone is speaking intelligently on this topic. From Niall Kennedy’s blog (please read the entire post so what is said here makes sense):

So what changed? Towards the end of the work day I find out Technorati received some feedback about the image. I was surprised since no one had contacted me directly or left a comment on Flickr or on my weblog. What I had previously perceived as corporate paranoia became a reality as I saw the feedback channel did not pass through me.

Rule #1: Don’t think you will aways be told when you mess up. 90% of the time they skip right over you and go straight to your boss – the person who can do something about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I failed to comprehend the effects of my actions on Technorati. I have always operated under the assumption that until I reach executive status at any company I work for I remain an individual voice and do not represent the organization. Just as weblogs and corporate transparency changed the world we love to interact with daily, it has also changed the way we see corporations. We establish relationships with companies through their engaged employees for better or for worse. The voice and actions of individuals become associated with the companies and organizations of their employ.

Rule #2 – that’s what usually happens – not being able to forsee the consequences of your actions.

Finally someone gets it! What might seem harmless to the employee can be damaging to the employer, which is why employees don’t have the right to do whatever they want, however they want and expect no consequences from their actions.

The end result in this case is that I have much more respect for Niall and Technorati. I think they handled the situation well and learned from it. If you live long enough eventually you’ll make a mistake. How that mistake is handled makes all the difference. Niall’s post is written very well and explains what happened, what his thought process was and why his thinking was skewed, along with the end results from those actions. He apologized and shared his experience…I highly suggest reading his post. Companies can benefit from this on how to handle situations like this and employees can learn from it so they don’t end up in the same situation.