Grooms, would you ask for an employer's permission to write your blog?

Timbuktu

Member
Joined
18 July 2010
Messages
14
Visit site
Hi! Imagine you get a new job in a superb yard. It's a whole new chapter in your life. You might like to maintain a blog where you could write about your new experiences.

Now, at the one hand, it is your life, and we have freedom of speech. But on the other hand, it touches other people's lives too, and your employer mightn't be happy to see his horses (or stables, or training methods or anything else, really) being discussed in the internet. So, it seems sort of ethical to ask for your employer's permission to write your blog where it concerns his yard and horses...

Any thoughts on this matter?
 
I'd mention it - you can always offer to change names, dates, locations etc to make the yard unidentifiable if needs be.
 
Tricky one!

Most employers HATE FB and Twitter with their employees!

The problem being that they can't be 'unidentified' so to speak and then if an owner sees their horse on FB/Twitter and goes nuts then they could lose that owner etc

Have a word with your employer and ask their take on it. Your employer could already have their own FB/Twitter page and you could be asked to write on it. A lot of the professional yards employ a media company to do their updates
 
I'd tell your boss that your thinking of writing a blog if they have any reservations then perhaps suggest changing names etc so not to give any personal details away.
Otherwise you could always write it and before you post it online ask them to read it.
You don't want to write anything which is going to affect their business it's not fair and not your place to do so but i'm sure they wouldn't mind.
 
You definately need to ask permission if you are going to talk about someone else's life/horses/yard, at the least...it is only good manners, you are employed to do a job that's all.
 
You absolutely should get permission and ask for guidelines on content. This is no different from someone who works in an office blogging about their employer.

Do you know how many people have been sacked/sued because of blogs where they talk about work, even disguising names etc? So many there's even a special word for it - getting 'dooced'. Defamation, gross misconduct, breaking confidentiality (talking about your employers training methods is giving away their 'trade secrets' for one thing), libel, ...you are opening up a can of worms for yourself if you go into this stupidly.
 
Top