Habits of a lifetime and the force of law

Citation

Pitt, M. (2010), "Habits of a lifetime and the force of law", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 18 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2010.04418faa.001

Habits of a lifetime and the force of law

Article Type: Employment law outlook From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 18, Issue 6

Mike PittEmployment-law partner at UK solicitor Pearson Hinchliffe Commercial Law. He can be contacted by e-mailing michael.pitt@pearson-hinchlif.co.uk or by telephoning +44 (0)161 785 3500.

What’s your most disgusting habit? Picking your nose? Scratching your armpits? Sneezing loudly into your hands?

Whatever it is, if you do it at work it could lead you – and your employer – into an awful lot of trouble.

The world of work is changing. Noisy, male-dominated factories have largely given way to quiet, open-plan offices, employing roughly equal numbers of men and women. Behavior such as smoking or telling lewd jokes, which only a few years ago would have been considered normal for the workplace, is now frowned upon or illegal.

Employees who, even relatively recently, would have tolerated such annoyances in a colleague as poor personal hygiene, serial sniffing or food slapping, increasingly feel empowered to complain to the boss.

And the boss has to do something about it, however trivial the “offence” may seem. Otherwise, he or she could feel the force of the law.

Let’s not get carried away, here. The boss must first be satisfied that the behavior in question really is preventing people from getting on with their work properly, and that the complaint is not simply from someone trying to settle a personal score.

If the boss is certain that there are genuine grounds for the complaint, it may be that a quiet word with the offender will sort things out. But if it does not, the person concerned may have to be disciplined – particularly if he or she seems to wish to continue being irritating simply to get pleasure from the effects it causes.

The organization’s internal “dignity at work” or anti-bullying policies will usually be the first port of call. Only if these fail to sort out the problem will more formal disciplinary procedures have to be invoked.

None of us is a saint. There will always have to be give-and-take when people work in close proximity and often under pressure. But as employees get more and more sensitive to colleagues’ behavior in the modern office environment, fewer will be prepared to “put up and shut up” for ever.

Hit the panic button on the “ishouldbeworking.com” web site, and you are instantly transferred to a search engine with the words “productivity tools” in the search box.

Dedicated to “slackers, goof-offs, procrastinators, loafers, long-lunchers and web-addicted employees worldwide”, ishouldbeworking.com was the final straw for one of my clients. She wanted to know if she was allowed by law to restrict the types of site her employees can access on her firm’s computers.

The short answer is “Yes”. Employers are perfectly entitled to prevent employees from putting office equipment and internet connections to personal use – or to restrict the types of site they may visit during working hours.

Time-wasting, which was my client’s main concern, is not the only reason employers get twitchy about employees who twitter. There are more and more cases of rogue employees who post negative comments on the internet about their bosses or the company as a whole. There are even examples of disgruntled employees divulging business secrets on the net.

One solution to such problems is simply to ban non-business use of the internet outright. Employers taking this approach must be prepared to monitor employees’ e-mail and internet access in order to police the policy. Under data-protection laws, employers must also alert their employees to the fact that monitoring is carried out and identify the reasons why.

Other firms use technology to block employee access to sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo during working time. Credit Suisse, British Gas and Lloyds TSB are among the companies to have adopted this approach, though some have computers without the blocking mechanism, which employees can use during their breaks.

A third group of employers allow employees “reasonable use” of the internet for their private business during working time. There may be several reasons.

The nature of their business may make it hard to distinguish between private and company internet use. They make take the view that networking with fellow professionals can help marketing or recruitment or boost employee morale. Or they may not wish to risk eroding employee goodwill or provoking accusations of “Big Brother” tactics.

Whatever a company’s policy on internet use at work, it should spell it out clearly and apply it consistently. If a firm pulls up one person and lets off another, it opens itself to the possibility of a discrimination claim.