How to handle online corporate harassment
By Jennie L. Phipps • Bankrate.com

Clearing out the crowd around the water cooler used to be enough to put the kibosh on the spread of company scuttlebutt. But these days, attacks come from less-controllable places.

Some of the ugliest assaults on companies by employees, both current and former, have taken place on the Internet. Cyber-harassment expert Parry Aftab calls it going postal online.

"People are either angry or vindictive about a workplace situation: their office isn't big enough, they were passed over for promotion," says Aftab. "Or there's a jilted romance or some other personal slight that causes a deep, emotional wound."

Aftab, who is executive director of CyberAngels, an organization devoted to protecting people online, says the attacker is sometimes motivated to keep up the assault until the victim is hurting as much as they are. For the most part, posters are content to inflict emotional pain electronically, with the occurrence of offline physical violence rare.

Just what is cyber-harassment?
Aftab, who is also a lawyer specializing in litigating Internet-related issues at the New York firm of Darby & Darby Associates, says 29 states have laws against online harassment that offer legal remedies.

However, simply making fun of fellow employees or criticizing the company or its executives generally doesn't fall under these laws, notes Aftab.

Take for example the common problem of online postings designed to sway public perception of a firm. "I don't know whether this influences stock prices. I doubt it does," says one poster who campaigned against a former employer this way. "But if some investor reads the board and decides not to invest because of what we say, then it's worth it."

Asa Graves, an analyst for First Union Securities, says, "It's hard to say if it hurts it, but it sure doesn't help."

Such postings aren't illegal, just unpleasant. In fact, they are mild compared to other attacks by disgruntled employees.

In one of the most high profile cases, a former employee of HealthSouth's Nittany Valley Rehabilitation Hospital, near State College, Pa., spent three months on a financial message board posting accusations, under a fictional porn star's name, against his former company. Sometimes he questioned the company's financial stability. Other times he alleged criminal violations. He even made false intimate claims about an executive's wife.

HealthSouth scrutinized the site and discovered the attacker's real name in a bio section. Ultimately, the company sued, claiming harassment. The attacker confessed, but he had no money. The company settled for an apology and some community service.

Aftab says if you can prove actual damages, you might win a defamation case. But that charge in most states is a misdemeanor with minor penalties attached, so the victory could be a hollow one.

Two other possibilities are libel and slander, which also are very difficult to prove since court interpretations of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech give broad leeway.

Fight back with PR
So what can you do if your company is attacked online? The problem is usually best handled by a tactful public relations assault.

Rusty Williams is vice president of strategic partnerships for Prospero Technologies Inc., which manages company Web sites and discussion boards for everything from the Wall Street Journal to AARP. He says squelching negative information about a company is almost impossible.

Instead, he advises firms to join in the discussion in ways that make them appear upfront and candid. Williams points to Cisco Systems as an example of a company that turned a bad situation into a good one by following this advice.

When the high-tech networking company laid off employees, it found itself on an irreverent discussion board whose participants focus wholeheartedly on the negative. Williams says Cisco jumped into the discussion and diffused the attack.

In a good-humored way, the company explained itself and pointed out that its CEO had taken a big pay cut that preserved other jobs. Even the cheeky denizens of this hard-edged Web site responded positively.

"The whole thing turned into a brand re-enforcer," says Williams, "rather than something that hurt the company."

Five tips for fighting back
Here are some suggestions from Williams and others on how to best redirect an online attack:

• Know what's happening. Stay on top of both the Web as well your company's internal Intranet. There are services you can hire to do this for you. For example, eWatch monitors online news sites, investor message boards, newsgroups and other online forums for a charge per category of $3,600 a year.
  
  
• Don't feel obligated to react to every mention. Online memories are short and responding to everything will just prolong the pain.
  
  
• If the negative discussion just won't go away, enter the fray in a positive way. Offer better information, answer questions honestly and clearly, and be approachable.
  
  
• If one of your employees is attacked personally, be vigorous in your response, but take the high road. You might consider posting something like, "We're here to answer questions and take our lumps, if necessary. But we won't have one person picked out of the pack and shot apart for something he or she may or may not have done. This is a collective business, and we make decisions together."
  
  
• If the personal attacks just won't stop, work with an attorney and the Web site owner to discover the perpetrator, then take whatever action you can to protect your employee.

Don't fuel the ire
You also need to guard against becoming an accomplice as well as a victim.

While you don't have much legal defense against online attacks aimed at the company, an employer can be held responsible for maintaining a hostile work environment if an employee suffers job-related online sexual or racial harassment.

Aftab says a company is particularly vulnerable to this sort of charge if it has an Intranet but doesn't monitor what goes on there and inadvertently tolerates these situations.

In addition to eliminating unmoderated discussions on internal and external Web sites, Aftab recommends that companies closely monitor other instances where employees are online in service of the company.

And she advises beefing up your employment practices liability insurance policy to make sure that it covers online harassment.

Jennie L. Phipps is a contributing editor based in Michigan.

-- Posted: Oct. 29, 2001