Police blogger wins award

There was an article in The Guardian today about an award winning police blog.

The blog is called Mental Health Cop.

The award is by Mind (mental health charity).

For more details of the story see Beyond the call of duty (Mary O'Hara).

Neurodiversity in the workplace

This post is on a topic that deviates somewhat from what this blog is typically based on.

Myself and colleagues at Heriot-Watt University have just finished a research project on neurodiversity and the workplace, with the focus on people who work in the transport and travel industry.

Neurodiversity, for the purpose of this research, relates to conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADD/ADHD and Asperger syndrome.

The research was commissioned by the TSSA trade union.

The report looks at three things in particular:

1) Knowledge of neurodiverse conditions.

2) Attitudes towards the term "neurodiversity".

3) Perceived level of support and perceived level of support for employees with a neurodiverse condition.

If you would like to view the report click here.

Managing corporate image through Twitter and Wikipedia

It's been a while since I last posted on here.

 

An article in The Guardian grabbed me today: MP demands apology after abusive tweets are traced to Wonga employee (Mike Deri Smith and Mark King).

 

Some details:

 

The MP and anti-payday loans campaigner Stella Creasy has demanded an apology from the online lender Wonga after a Guardian investigation uncovered evidence that an employee of the firm has been using an anonymous Twitter account to publicly attack her, calling her mentally unstable.

 

Wonga's slogan and adverts promise "straight talking money", but company computers appear to have been used to post anonymous comments on blogs critical of its practices and there is evidence that a second Wonga employee has deleted criticism from its Wikipedia page...

Employment wrongs

Fired for blogging about new job

Just heard of a story from the USA where someone who had just got a new job had the offer rescinded after posting details of the offer on his blog.

For more details see: Would you sack someone for blogging about your job offer? (HR Zone).

You may need to register with HR Zone to access this article.

Oil tanker dispute video

This is a story big in the news today.

Here the employee side of the dispute through this video produced by the UNITE trade union.

Tweeting taxi driver

The BBC News website ran an article this week about a Tweeting taxi driver in Thailand.

It would seem such activities have turned the taxi driver into a bit a local and international celebrity.

To read more and view a video see How tweeting Thai taxi driver scooped world media (by Jonah Fisher).

Facebook and the military

According to an article published last week on the BBC News website, soldiers who post photographs to Facebook may be putting themselves and their families, as well as their colleagues, at risk.

The problem concerns "geotagged" photgraphs in that military personnel may inadvertently reveal the exact location of their unit or their family.

For more details see US Army: Geotagged Facebook posts put soldiers' lives at risk.

I'm sure there may be wider lessons to learnt here for workers who use Facebook, even if the threat is not quite the same.

Police blogger sues The Times

Work-related blogs appear to have been caught up in the recent public enquiry on the newspaper industry, i.e. the illegal hacking into telephones and email accounts by journalists in the UK.

In this instance it is the owner of the NightJack blog - an anonymous work-related blog looking at police work that created a lot of media attention not that long ago.

Two stories on this matter appeared in The Guardian last week:

For police blogger NightJack, it wasn't a fair cop by Patrick Kinglsey.

NightJack blogger to sue the Times for damages by Owen Boycott.

I suppose it's a case of let's wait and see what come of it...

College staff rise up against principal

Some anonymous employees of Adam Smith College in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland have taken to the Internet to vent their apparent individual and collective lack of faith in their current Principal and Board of Directors.

See the following website/blog: It's our college not Craig's.

Not sure how long the campaign has been going on for but 164 responses so far from interested parties.

Well worth a look whichever angle you would see such a difficult situation.

What happens when the company Twitter user quits?

Hopefully what is typical is not to be defined by this article recently in the Guardian:

A Twitter user is being sued for £217,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs.

Noah Kravitz, a writer from Oakland, California, amassed 17,000 followers on the social networking site when he worked for PhoneDog, a website providing news and reviews about mobile phones.

He posted Twitter messages under the name @Phonedog_Noah, but in October 2010 he left the company, renamed his account @noahkravitz and took his following with him.

PhoneDog has launched legal proceedings seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000.

The company is arguing that Kravitz's list of followers constitutes a customer database and the valuation is an estimate of how much each follower is worth to the company.

The case raises questions about the value of Twitter to companies that are increasingly using the website to communicate with customers and promote their products.

Legal observers believe that if damages are awarded against Kravitz, it could set a precedent for assigning a commercial value to Twitter followers acquired in a business context.

For more details see Company sues ex-employee for his Twitter followers (by Robert Booth).

Teachers warned about use of Twitter and Facebook

Scottish teachers are being warned that their use of social networking sites could put their careers at risk.

The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association believes teachers can reveal too much personal information on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The union also fears they could become overly familiar with pupils.

For more details see: Teachers warned over Facebook and Twitter use (BBC News).