Recent discussions about companies considering whether employee blogging needs to be controlled, put under policy, policed, etc. have gotten me thinking about what the root cause behind the concern is.
When my father worked he knew that he would always have a job as long as he did a good job for the company and the company knew they would keep him on as long as he did a good job. This commitment between each other provided a great deal of benefit for both parties and I suspect a great deal more intangible value was obtained by the company from this relationship than my father got. One benefit was my father's loyalty to his company. This loyalty was strong and he always spoke very well of his company even when they did things he did not really care for. He seemed to believe that even though he did not like it he never believed the company did any thing that was not in the best interests of the employees
It is obvious today that there is no such commitment between most employers and their employees. This lack of commitment has broken, or failed to build, the bond of loyalty and therefore employees are much more free to speak about their employer. This is not to say it causes employees to speak ill of a company but it certainly does not have the power that loyalty has to prevent employees from speaking ill of a company. With loyalty the conversation seemed imbalanced in that more good and less wrong was spoken about. Now without loyalty it would seem that either side of the scale may be prevalent.
So are employers worried that there is a lot more bad to speak about than good?
Perhaps companies should count blogging as the blessing it is, knowledge they never had before. Instead of worrying about what is being said a company should consider why it is being said or not said.
For another interesting view on this topic look at John Porcaro's blog http://johnporcaro.typepad.com/blog/2005/01/blogging_on_the.html
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