DISMISSAL AND RELATED PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA-RELATED MISCONDUCT IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKPLACE

The advent of social media-related platforms has directly and/or indirectly affected the employer-employee relationship in the South African workplace. The misuse of social media by employees in the workplace during office working hours has resulted in numerous dismissals of employees for social media-related misconduct in South Africa. While such dismissals of employees for social media-related misconduct could be justifiable, some employees have been sometimes unfairly dismissed for their mere use of social media platforms and/or for the innocent comments made through such platforms in the South African workplace during office working hours. Owing to this conundrum, the article investigates the procedural and substantive fairness of social media-related dismissals of employees in accordance with the South African employment laws. This is done to unpack problems associated with social media-related misconduct in the workplace and related flaws in the South African employment laws. Moreover, examples of social media-related misconduct by employees are discussed and possible recommendations that could adopted to combat such misconduct are provided.