Infosys to snoop on staffers’ rants on social media networks

If you are an Infoscion — an employee of Infosys Technologies —  better be on your guard. That casual banter about a colleague or a project on Facebook or Orkut might land you in trouble. Come August, whatever you post on the social media network will be under the company’s watch.

The technology biggie is planning to introduce a social media policy, a first in India, to make employees more responsible in their expressions. In an extreme scenario, an Infoscion could lose his job if his post on the social media network breaches the company’s code of conduct.

“We are addressing our concerns on privacy of client data that could be leaked out in the social media circles (by employees).

We also want our employees to understand that they are accountable and responsible for what they express (about the company) in that space,” Nandita Gurjar, senior vice-president and group head, human resources, Infosys, said on Tuesday.
Gurjar, however, declined to call it censorship. “It’s just discipline,” she said.

The company has a code of conduct in place for its internal social media network; it now wants to use it for external communication by employees. Most major global companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Intel already have a similar regulation in place. 

It spells out clearly what employees can express in that space and what they can’t.

For instance, computer chipmaker Intel’s rule book on social media conduct asks its employees to “respect proprietary information and content, and confidentiality”. This is just one of the many conduct codes listed out by the US company.
Gurjar said a large part of Infosys’ code of conduct would revolve around confidentiality of client information and employee opinions that could be offensive to others.

“You can disagree but not be disagreeable. You have the right to an opinion and can debate with the CEO very openly and say his idea is lousy but you can’t call him stupid. You can’t get personal in your remarks (about your colleague) on the social media,” said Gurjar.

Gurjar has started working towards formalising the policy and is expected to make a presentation of it to a team of the IT industry lobby body — National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) - in Chennai on July 22 and July 23.  

“They (Nasscom) are asking us how we are doing it (coming out with policy). They will roll it out everywhere,” she said. Gurjar is expecting other companies to emulate Infosys’ move. “More companies will follow us immediately. We will do it in August and by December everybody would have done it because they are all asking about it,” she said.

Ganesh Natarajan, former chairman of Nasscom, is not as optimistic about regulating employees. “It is (corporate social media policy) a very bad idea. On the contrary, I believe, free flow
of expression should be encouraged through the media.

Obviously, something vulgar or rude should be checked but not through regulating the social media activities of employees,” said Natarajan.

According to him, a policy may not help to curb the strong blogging community.