When posting comments about your workplace on social media, you should avoid saying anything you would not be willing to shout out in the middle of the office.

That is the advice from Peter Holland from Monash University business school and Macquarie University academics Alison Barnes and Nikola Balnave who will on Friday present a paper to a University of NSW workplace relations conference in Canberra.

The academic paper says organisations including IBM and HP have embraced social media including Facebook and Twitter as part of their internal communications.

But some organisations are more wary about the use of social media in providing an outlet for potentially negative commentary about the workplace.