Action for leaks on networking sites

Infosys Technologies aims to introduce a social media policy which will help it take legal action against employees who leak confidential company information on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Orkut.

Expected to come into force next month, it will make Infosys the first Indian company to introduce such a policy, according to Nandita Gurjar, senior vice-president and group head, Human Resources, at Infosys.

Infosys has already issued warning letters to some employees found to have leaked company information on various social networking sites. The proposed policy will empower the company to initiate legal action against employees who post sensitive company information or make personal attacks against the company’s top management on these sites.

Gurjar reasons that many a time, employees not only make irrelevant postings on social networking sites, but also leak out “sensitive information” about projects they are working on. “For example, there are instances when two people working on the same project posted project information on sites like Facebook, least bothered about the fact that this is an information leakage made on an unprotected site,” said Gurjar.

“The social media policy we plan to introduce will talk about the dos and donts of an employee participating in social media. It is like a code of conduct which aims at stopping the employees from sharing confidential and sensitive company information on unprotected places like social networking sites,” she explained.

The spike in the number of employees venting their ire on social networking sites started early this year when the company introduced a new management system, christened ‘iRace’, to remap the technology skills of the employees. iRace attracted unprecedented opposition from Infosys employees on the Net. Many vented their anger via public forums like Facebook and Twitter, often making personal attacks. Many participated in the company’s Intranet blogging page ‘Sparsh’.