I expect to see the recent news stories on the suspension of a Vodafone employee for sending an obsecene and homophobic Tweet referenced in any number of press releases and legal updates issued by solicitors over the next few months. The Telegraph report above doesn't include the text of the Tweet itself, but to be honest it wasn't clever or funny so I didn't see the need to include a link to it.

At a rough guess the incident will be held out as an example of the "dangers of social media in the workplace" or, at the very least, a justification for implementing a social media policy for your business.

The reality is that this isn't a social media policy issue. There isn't an IT use policy in existence which would permit this kind of use of a network by employees. I am not an employment lawyer, but it can't be difficult to argue that issuing homophobic and obsene material in this way justifies disciplinary proceedings - regardless of any specific policy which might be in place.

At its core it isn't really even a social media issue (although the ease with which content can be created and disseminated certainly helps to increase the damage). There have been a minority of employees who act irresponsibly since long before Twitter came on the scene.

What will probably be overlooked in the excitement is that there was another incident involving Vodafone Hungary at the end of last year which is much more relevant to the question of social media policies.

Morgan PR blogged about this last December in a post entitled "PR blunder as Vodafone sack marketer over funny Twitter" which came to my attention via Twitter. Please check out their post for the full detail of the incident, which involved the sacking of one of the Vodafone PR team for re-tweeting an update from T-Mobile in Hungary announcing that their network was experiencing problems together with the addition of a humorous "so give us a call".

Personally, I thought the Vodafone marketer's tweet was an excellent use of Twitter. Clearly Vodafone disagreed and suffered what Morgan PR term in their post a "sense of humour failure".

The point is that this second incident is a much better illustration of why social media policies are necessary. If your employees are using social media then this is the kind of grey area where they need guidance on what is and isn't acceptable.

This is partly for their protection so that they know what to expect, what the company's social media "ethos" is and how to avoid overstepping the line. However, it is equally for the protection of the employer to ensure that appropriate action can be taken if the policy is breached without risking a claim by the employee.

If you are thinking about social media policies then I would recommend focussing your attention on the Hungarian incident than the UK one.

However, I suspect that the focus from solicitors and HR consultants will be the other way around!

I will be following up on this post in a few months' time so If you do come across any legal updates or press releases featuring this then please let me know via the comments.