WHITE-COLLAR employers are being warned of the legal and reputational dangers of employees "sounding off" on social media.

Organisers of Scotland's first national conference on sectarianism in the workplace have claimed there is an upsurge in middle-class professionals running several social media accounts and then being identified as having posted discriminatory views.

Campaign group Nil By Mouth said "Twitter trolls" were not confined to one social class or religious group, pointing out that posts made after consumption of alcohol or plain boredom often came back to haunt.

A leading employment lawyer has also warned of the limits of freedom of speech and rights of privacy protections when it comes to workers losing their jobs for social media posts.

The Edinburgh conference, scheduled for next month, targets HR and equalities' staff from large public and private sector employers as well as charities and trade unions.

Delegates will be drawn from local authorities, police divisions, universities, colleges co-operatives, non-governmental public bodies, health boards, private businesses and large voluntary sector employers.

Scotland's football authorities have also been invited to attend.

In recent years there have been a number of high profile incidents regarding sectarian behaviour at work and research published last year by Edinburgh University highlighted that nearly two thirds of Scottish local authorities were perceived as paying only "lip service" to protecting faith and belief at work.

Nil By Mouth campaign director Dave Scott said: "'It was revealed last year that one out of every two crimes committed across the UK take place online and we have seen outwardly respectable professional people exposed as 'twitter trolls.'

"This is a problem which isn't unique to any one social class or religious grouping and we will be putting this message across to all the delegates."

Jonathan Rennie, employment partner at TLT LLP, who will be speaking on social media at the conference said:

"Social media has the allure of instant communication to a wide audience. It can provide a platform for individuals to 'sound off' and hit the send button when perhaps they would not be so comfortable to communicate the same message face to face.

"These keyboard warriors also have a tendency to assume that their comments are protected through freedom of speech or the right to privacy.

"But in fact the law has not yet kept up to speed with these new technologies and does not provide easy answers. "What we can say is that comments that are harassing and discriminatory may well have repercussions as the law develops, particularly when the comments are made in connection with work and employment."