photo credit: eshm
I was having a flick through my employment contract and I found the following clause:
13.2
You agree that during the course of this contract and after the termination of the contract for whatever reason without limit in point in time you will keep in confidence and shall not disclose to any person unless authorised to do so with the prior written consent of the Company the following:-
13.2.1 Any consultancy know-how, methods, tools, techniques or intellectual capital.
I realised that some of my blog entries or tweets could fall foul of this clause so I asked for written permission to continue blogging generic “work related” content such as Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Modelling and Business Objects.
Rather than granting this and leveraging the fairly good google rankings that my posts seem to get I was asked to remove all work related posts.
Business Objects Best Practice (higher ranking than BusinessObjects.com)
Business Objects New Features (Page One)
Dimensional Modelling (Ralph Kimball ?)
As such I have password protected all of my work related posts.
If you are struggling to find content there are a variety of searches that could turn up interesting content.
Alternatively you can go to my company site, contact details can be found here or here.
7 replies on “Blogging Whilst Employed – Beware!”
When I got a job at Sony Computer Entertainment, I requested permission to continue running the WipEout fan-site that I have and was told that I could continue to do so. However, I was strictly forbidden from updating with news that had not yet been released on the mainstream gaming sites. It was a rubbish situation, because it just meant that despite me having a job where the game was made, my site was always last to break any news. I also got in trouble for using an image I was given that had also been granted as an exclusive to a German games magazine. Inevitably somebody in marketing spotted it on my site, kicked up a fuss and my boss had a go at me.
I’ve always been pretty careful on my blog, though. I rarely mention anything about work. My girlfriend got Dooced due to a post on her blog, too, so that’s enough incentive to leave work related comment out of my own… especially when I might not have anything nice to say! ;o)
That appears to be quite a restrictive clause. It also effectively ‘gags’ you once your employment has finished. This appears to be taking things too far. What do they fear? Will your Business Objects Best Practice post cost the company thousands of pounds in lost revenue? I doubt it. If anything, these articles may help bring business to these companies.
It’s a real shame. Blogging is all about sharing ideas, thoughts, workarounds to problems. We all learn from each other.
To find that you cannot share this with your fellow community is poor form in my eyes. Perhaps you can continue blogging using a pseudonym?
Thanks for the feedback.
I have some strong views on this situation but as I love my work they are best kept private!
When it comes to work related blogging I generally stick to the rule of not posting anything that I wouldn’t be comfortable with my boss hearing me say.
Yes, it does feel like being gagged from time to time, but that all depends on what extent you value your job and your freedom to speak your mind. Unfortunately the two seldom make good bedfellows if you’re not content in your job. Which, by and large, is when you’re most likely to need an outlet for your frustration.
Me, I don’t get paid nearly enough to pimp my company on my blog. I need the money I do get paid, though, so I’m content only to mention “work” in the vaguest of references.
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I gotta say that I would be looking for new employment based on this. This speaks to a culture of CYA and corporate BS.
They’re giving you a message that corporate policy is more important than you, more important than your career, more important than your industry visibility…
Basically they’re renting your brain and when they’re done with it they will be only too happy to show it the door with zero notice.
That’s my opinion anyway…
I gotta say that I would be looking for new employment based on this. This speaks to a culture of CYA and corporate BS.
They’re giving you a message that corporate policy is more important than you, more important than your career, more important than your industry visibility…
Basically they’re renting your brain and when they’re done with it they will be only too happy to show it the door with zero notice.
That’s my opinion anyway…