Have you frolicked lately? Do you know someone who has? The answers are likely to be ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’.

“Off on a folic of his own” is a legal phrase we might all become familiar with quite soon.

It refers to the liability an employer has for the actions of the employee, and is being used to consider whether an employee’s use of social media at and, crucially, away from the workplace is the responsibility of the employer.

Quoting from leading law firm Pinsent Masons: “An employer, under UK law, is generally liable for the actions of its employees which they make whilst carrying out their employment. This is known as “vicarious liability”. The best defence for an employer is to show that the employee was not taking action as part of his employment, but was off on ‘a frolic of his own’.”

The question is whether an employee at work or at home posting something defamatory on a social network can be considered the employer’s fault.

I learnt about this curious phrase at a legal seminar where a firm of lawyers explained at some length the many and varied ways that companies can (and in their view) should control employees’ use of social media to avoid inappropriate ‘frolics.’

If you are reading this it’s probably because you have a professional interest in social media and think of social media in broadly positive terms.

To sit in the company of lawyers and concerned HR managers was to experience a discussion of social media from the other end of the telescope, where the talk is of threats and control.

One person related the tale of how some employees had, without asking, migrated from personal mobiles to personal Blackberries and Iphones and were seen to have propped them up on their desk so that despite the ban on ringtones they were still able to see them.

Working there must be a real non-stop frolic. It’s also an attitude that is so at odds with the expectation of being in contact with your network that it that makes it more rather than less likely  that an employee will post something damaging about their daily grind.

Ironically, banning access to networks in the workplace simply puts the opportunity for defamation further out of the control of the employer.

The handout at the event comprised 10 pages of risks, binding obligations, bans, disciplinary codes and so on, with a single page of benefits tacked on at the end.

One of the benefits of social media listed was ‘increase staff interaction – can create a good company culture’ but it’s hard to see how you can make a leap from downright distrust of social media to fostering healthy staff morale.

That sounds like quite a long journey and certainly needs a robust social media policy drawing up to guide everyone.

But more important than that is an appraisal of corporate values and the extent to which the organisation wants to have a mature relationship with its employees.

We’ve all seen the “If Facebook were a country….” presentations. The simple truth is that Facebook and other platforms are growing like they are because they satisfy our hard-wired desire to share information and show-off.

On the evidence of today’s event, some HR people need to make the connection between that thought and the ‘H’ in their job title.