Due to the digitalisation of corporations, employers must consider how laws apply to the digital sphere. By disregarding these laws, the business can face a damaged reputation, or be sued. On the opposite hand, competitor businesses and disgruntled employees acting illegally can be dealt with through legal measures, which is applicable if they are copying trademarked logos or leaving false reviews. Here are the top digital legal issues that employers should be aware of.
Intellectual Property
A trademark is a sign or design that is part of intellectual property, which identifies products and services. Registering a trademark over your business logo and name is essential, especially if you are sharing it online via social media, websites and email-marketing. This can become a digital legal issue if another company online steals your business logo, and is using it for financial gain. Moreover, Copyright laws protect the content developed by others to ensure it is not copied. This content under protection includes all authorship works such as dramatic, musical, literacy, songs, and architectural works. To apply this to the digital realm, when writing text for your business website, you must make sure it is original and is not a copy of competitors to avoid legal fines. If you believe another business is using your intellectual property, get in touch with a commercial lawyer like those from LegalVision.
Misleading Conduct
Businesses of all sizes can take advantage of social media marketing such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Some people do not realise that the same false and misleading claims that can be made via television or newspaper advertisements also apply online, as consumer protection laws are not specific to offline media. This can also apply to influencers and reviews, whereby you cannot pay an influencer to say they enjoyed or liked a product when they have never used it. Similarly, if a business allows false negative comments about competitors or false positive claims about their own product even if it is made by fans, the business can be held accountable as they did not monitor and delete the posts.
Defamation
Bad reviews can be detrimental for small businesses especially, but are these considered defamation? The answer is yes, reviews can be classified as defamation if they are false or misleading, and if it is posted in a public space under the Defamation Act 2005. This is because it can persuade other individuals to believe these untrue claims, and can contribute to financial losses for the business. However, there are limitations to who can take action against these reviewers, particularly in Australia. There must be less than a year of time elapsed between when the comment was made and the legal claim, and also a business must have less than ten full time employees to take legal action.
Content Sharing Violence
As of 2019, the Australian government has honed in on social media sites that show ‘abhorrent violent material’. However, this can be user created content, which makes any blog sites, social media sites, dating sites, listings and job sites vulnerable to these laws. This is important due to the shareability of online content, whereby once something is uploaded, it can be hard to shut it down due to shares, comments and screenshots.
Regulation of Employee Social Media
Regulation of an employees social media can differ based on a brand’s own Social Media Policy. It involves the protection of the company’s official accounts as well as the employees own social media. The personal use is governed by the fact that employees are a part of a company’s brand, especially targeted at well known individuals who can cause great problems for the company if they post inappropriate or derogatory content. Additionally, controversy and legal trouble can be created when individuals post from a company’s branded accounts, such as US brand Wendy’s posting a Pepe the frog meme that has white supremist connotations, thus harming their reputation. Finally, harassment and bullying in the workplace can also extend to online, whereby harassment charges can be pressed on individuals and lead to workplace disputes which affects the overall business’ quality of work.
Overall, an employer should be aware of the legal regulations that apply to the digital sphere in terms of employee protection, intellectual property protection, and preserving the good reputation of the business. This is especially evident through the regulation of employees’ social media, intellectual property, and misleading conduct.
When initially fixing payroll in QuickBooks, you set an inventory of employee defaults that apply to all or any of your employees.
you'll then add individual payroll items that apply only to specific employees.
Some items in QuickBooks cannot be assigned using employee defaults, since they require specific information that cannot be automated for tax or legal reasons.
The same Gallup polls also found that 37% of all US workers have had some experience with working remotely, up from 30% in the last decade ( a 25% increase).
Telecommuters seem to be happier and more productive than other workers.
Gwendolyn Kestrel of Hotel Marketing Works concurs- “The overwhelming benefit is that you can hire the best, no matter where they live”.
A remote worker typically interacts with the team for a limited time and therefore is more likely to have a different thought process.
Another advantage of having a geographically distributed team is the ability to keep the work going across different time zones and provide support for customers who may are not in the same time zone as the head office.
Bryan Phelps of Big Leap, LLC believes that digital marketing is possibly one of the best industries to have a remote workforce because digital marketers are accustomed to using online tools.
Formulating the best plans for Digital Collaboration in the Workplace 2021 is a must to adapt to the dynamically changing professional world.Flexible working hours and the advantages of working remotely are no longer special privileges – Digital Collaboration 2021 has become the new normal.The demand and necessity of Digital Collaboration have entirely changed the way organizations function.
Forget the days when “workplace” referred to a physical space, occupied by the workforce during regular working hours.
Today’s workplace is just confined to a laptop screen.
The employers are benefitting from this with a “more flexible teaming”.This has been a major upliftment to the Digital Workplace supported by one of the important aspects of Digital Collaboration.Smart and Flexible work environments ensure a smooth workflow and better management of the workplace.
However, the usefulness of a Digital Collaboration is enhanced when implemented, correctly.Here are some of the important aspects to focus on to make a Collaborative Digital Workplace a success:Digital Collaboration Platform promotes Employee Engagement.The remote workforce is scattered across cities, states, or even globally.
Features such as personalized dashboard, news feed, content sharing attributes, instant messages facilities and recent updates help keep employees engaged and up to date.Knowledge ManagementIt is important to facilitate knowledge sharing to ensure knowledge retention within the workplace.
A Labor Attorney helps both employers and employees in dealing with unfair labor practices.
People whose employment rights are violated must take the necessary legal actions.
