Once limited to hushed exchanges in the break room, employees have more venues to complain than ever. Web 2.0 tools have created a virtual water cooler, and employees' gossip — about everything from how managers handle layoffs to organising company social functions — can instantly reach an opinionated, enabling and often highly reactionary audience.

Think you can avoid it? Remember that the first reports about the recent plane crash into New York City's Hudson River came via Twitter. Protesting Moldovans turned to Twitter to circumvent an apparent blackout in coverage of their protests over alleged election fraud. A March survey of 500 small to medium businesses by UK mobile carrier O2 found 17 per cent were "tweeting" regularly and 28 per cent of those had started within the previous month.

While it represents the true democratisation of the internet, unmoderated social media also raises the potential for libel accusations, crippling morale issues and intra-office conflict. It's yet another headache for managers already navigating the challenges of tough economic times — but it's there whether you want it to be or not. The best approach: get your head out of the sand; you can't control the conversation, but at least you can be part of it. Here are three things to consider before you do.

Time: setting a policy on social networking at work takes consultation, but be aware it could take months — if ever — before dynamics change for the better. You'll also need to set aside time every few days to keep up with your workers' communications.

Money: social networking tools are generally free to use, so outright costs are low.

Key message: employees will always want a place to vent, and they probably don't want even well-meaning managers involved. However, good-faith efforts to normalise social media, solicit feedback and encourage candid management assessments may defuse potential social network time bombs without compromising morale.

Goal: consider social media's place within existing morale management strategies

Management consultants have filled books with advice on managing employee morale, but even employees with the best managers will complain and gossip. If you're not actively engaged in conversations with your workers, you may be surprised to know how they really feel about the way things are going. Regular performance reviews are one opportunity to gather such information, but employees see these assessments as highly formal and may well be reluctant to raise criticisms or offer feedback when they feel they're being judged. Yet that doesn't mean they won't walk out of the meeting and immediately start complaining about you to their Facebook friends.

When they do, word can travel fast: Quantcast figures suggest Facebook receives 83 million visitors per month, and Twitter has exploded from around 1.5 million visitors in November to 15 million generally tertiary-educated, 18-49-year-old visitors by the end of March. Even relatively new boss- and company-rating sites are seeing growth: GlassDoor.com (see Checklist below), for example, saw visits jump from around 40,000 per month in November to 150,000 in March. Others, such as WorkRant.com, have far more modest numbers.

Managers always need thick skins — and doubly so when online forums are involved. Critics find the anonymity of the online arena emboldening, and often take an overly combative stance in their comments. Here are a few random posts found on Twitter just by searching for the word boss: "I don't want a new job, just for the Boss to retire, and go enjoy life...", "Argh! My boss is on Twitter! Goodbye all Tweets about secret office parties when the boss is at the gym!", and the very simple "ugh. The Boss is around".

Take it in stride and think about ways to develop regular, widely available channels for employees to offer constructive feedback rather than simply complaining to anonymous forums. Consider setting up a Twitter feed, Facebook page or MySpace presence and encourage feedback, but always respect employees' boundaries. Your focus shouldn't be on formulating a punitive search-and-destroy mission, but rather on joining the conversation.

Checklist: how to keep tabs on water-cooler gossip

• Google Alerts: lets you monitor content related to specific topics as it appears online. Set up an alert for your name or company name, for example (remember to enclose multiple words in quotation marks), and you'll get instant, daily or weekly updates as those words pop up in Google's web index, YouTube videos, blogs, and other content.


• Glassdoor.com, telonu.com, jobvent.com: encourage employees to, as in the case of Telonu.com, "rave, rant, rate your workplace [and] the people there". Mostly directed at CEOs or companies, but these sites are also filled with layoff stories and management complaints. Many rate and rank companies or bosses, and some let you "subscribe" to follow updates from specific people.


• bossbitching.com, workrant.com, eBossWatch: these sites are more focused on complaints about bosses. Language can be florid and many accounts are anonymous, so these may be mainly academic exercises rather than fonts of actionable information.


• Twitter: sign up and you can search and view tweets (brief, 140-character mini-blogs) from Twitter's more than 6 million estimated users. Most use real names to make themselves easy to find.


• Facebook: the hugely popular multimedia update service that links "friends" from around the world. Statistically speaking, many of your employees are already using it regularly to chat with friends and share their thoughts on everything in their lives, whether boss-related or not.