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It is high time Indian IT companies update their Social Media policy on hate message!!

It is high time Indian IT companies update their Social Media policy on hate message!!
Dr M B Ahmed How many of you have had to leave a WhatsApp group or unfriend a Facebook friend or stop accessing your Twitter account because you could not take the 'it' anymore? Yes, Im talking about the hate messages on social media, the daily dose of which is ever increasing and more so in Indian social media. Almost everyone has a personal story of how they have lost their friends, their colleagues, close relatives after having an ugly spat over one such hate message. Social media can influence an elections, trigger an uprising, topple a government, drive a major social change then why on earth are we taking time to realize that it can impact work-spaces, relationship between colleagues, employee-supervisor relationships and of course, the prestigious work culture that companies boast about. It was not a long time ago, almost every major IT companies had strict policies on use of cell phones at workplace. Then came Facebook followed by Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and innumerable apps that flooded the market. It became almost impossible to stop employees from using the social media hence many companies came up with Social Media Policy as a regular sub topic of HR policy. roughly around the turn of this decade many companies brought in social media policy as part of their HR policy

A brief look at India’s major IT employers with exception of few, it appears that the social media policy so far has been limited to protect company’s reputation, its client, leaking personal information of its colleagues. Policy goes into a lot of detail to explain the guidelines of how an employee is barred from bringing any disrepute to Company and its clients. Many companies have also recently updated its policy when employees started airing their grievances on Social Media. Google updated its policy for its communities to not have active political discussions. (link to article) India’s Major employers though express their intent to provide peaceful, conducive and nondiscriminatory atmosphere at work places, a lot is desired to ensure these guidelines also extend to how their employees should behave on social media especially when its related to posting inflammatory and discriminatory message. With hyper-connected world, it is very common to connect to your colleagues on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter to name a few. The line between a person’s personal and professional is getting blurred.

If a colleagues is continuously posting insensitive, discriminatory, inflammatory message about a legally protected entity religion, caste, sexual orientation. It becomes very difficult for his colleagues belonging to those protected legal entity to read those hate message in the morning and come to work unaffected. It becomes even more worrisome if the one who is posting expresses their opinions about other’s religion, caste, economic status is in a position of authority. It cannot be thus ascertained that such opinions are not influencing the decisions made at work place. It is very likely that such decisions are well known to people but never reported by anyone due to fear of retaliation. Tech Mahindra had to sack its chief officer for diversity and inclusion who was found guilty of discrimination towards homosexuals and Muslims. Its ironic that officers whose only role was to ensure there was no discrimination was found guilty of discriminatory behavior. On 28th March an employee of Infosys (link to article) was fired for posting a message that encourages people to spread the virus. On April 10, another employee was found to have shared message calling for killing of Muslims. The employer and its CEO has been tagged by several users on Twitter. It is yet to be seen if his employer will take any action on a hate message which has potential incite violence.

 

  Hate messages precedes hate crimes, and no company would want to be embroiled in any hate crime linked to the hate message shared by one of its employee. With the recent developments in India over Article 370, CAA and COVID, there has been significant increase in hate message against a particular community. Hence it is important the Indian IT companies take immediate steps in maintaining hate free atmosphere for their colleagues be it at workplace or otherwise. India’s major employers should update their social media policy so that its employees understand the implication of posting hate message to themselves, their colleagues and company’s reputation. Delaying to update their social media policy is denying the fact the such hate messages.

Perhaps a movement like #MeToo or tragedy like that of Rohith Vemula or Dr Payal Tadvi will force the companies to change its policy, May be only then it will be realized that Social Media can also have its impact at workplaces. However would any company afford to risk the dis-reputation that comes along with it?