Their bosses read their WhatsApps. Then their jobs were on the line

Dear readers — how many WhatsApp groups are you in? In this day and age, nearly every event, meet-up and trip abroad requires the formation of one to share details – and have a good gossip.

But for six members of staff at Liverpool literature festival Writing On The Wall (WOW), their participation in a chat on WhatsApp has landed them in hot water. After a group containing past and present employees was discovered by bosses, staffers are facing allegations of gross misconduct and are under threat of dismissal. So, is snooping through personal WhatsApps a breach of privacy? Or are organisations well within their right to search social media accounts if they’re used on work devices? 

Read on for that story — but first, your Post briefing.

Your Post briefing

Scouse TV star Jack McMullen was in Aigburth this week, filming series two of This City is Ours. The first season of the Liverpool-set BBC drama, created and written by Merseyside’s own Stephen Butchard, was a critical and commercial success, starring local breakout star James Nelson-Joyce alongside established Hollywood mainstay Sean Bean. Nelson-Joyce, who was spotted filming in Chinatown last week, will return as series lead Michael Kavanagh, with Jack McMullen once again playing Jamie Phelan.

The furore over the BBC’s decision to platform Kelvin MacKenzie continues. The editor of The Sun back when the newspaper’s 'The Truth' story falsely blamed the Hillsborough disaster on Liverpool fans, MacKenzie was interviewed with the BBC on the subject of journalistic ethics following the resignation of its director-general Tim Davie. Liverpool FC wrote to the BBC to register their fury over the decision, and now Peter Scarfe from the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance has described it as “an absolute insult, a despicable insult to the memories and families of the 97 [victims of the disaster].” The Liverpool supporters' union, The Spirit of Shankly, has reacted with "anger and total disbelief", while Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, also posted on X: "You couldn't make it up.” To read our interview with Mr Byrne about the importance of the “Hillsborough law” earlier this year, click here.

*names have been changed

It was a quiet Tuesday in September. Pamela* could feel her stomach rumbling; she was ready for lunch. She wasn’t going alone; during the better part of the year that Pamela had worked for Liverpool’s biggest literature festival, Writing on the Wall, she’d made firm friends with her colleagues, all women in their twenties and thirties. They socialised outside the office: coffee dates, dog walks and weekend cocktails. And they regularly got lunch together. 

So it went that day. But when Pamela returned to Writing on the Wall’s Toxteth office with her colleagues, ready to settle in for an afternoon of work, something immediately felt off. Her colleague, Lucy*, pulled her to one side, panicked. She swore her computer had previously been positioned at the front of her desk. Now it was pushed back, her office chair swung to one side. When she checked her internet history, it showed the instant messaging platform, WhatsApp, had been opened and closed on her browser — while the women were out to lunch. Unease crept in. 

Like many people, staff at WOW used WhatsApp as their work communications platform, as well as for personal messages to friends and family. And, like many people, they were participants in a number of group chats. 

When Pamela thought about why someone in the office might be accessing her colleague’s WhatsApp, one group chat in particular kept coming to mind. It was called ‘Employees Of The Month’; its members were a handful of past and present WOW staff. While the chat was used to share memes, photos of pets and organise shopping excursions on days off, it was also used to vent about Writing on the Wall and its co-directors: Mike Morris and Madeline Heneghan. Could one of her bosses have read the chat, wondered Pamela? No, that would surely be a huge violation of privacy. She tried to put the incident out of her mind.