While doing some prep work for today's Corporate Social Networking Forum here in London I looked up at the latest add on I installed in my Firefox browser.
The Great Firewall of China plug in mimics what it's like to surf the Internet in the People's Republic of China, with access to various sites being that the powers that be don't want you to see, being cut off.
It got me thinking. You don't actually need to install it to see what it's like living in a society that restricts what you can and can't see online. A stint working in a thousands of offices a lot closer to home can give you a taste of it as well!
So I am being flippant, but there is a serious point. I mean, consider the following:
According to a survey by jobs site Monster, 9/10 office workers don't use Twitter in the office as it's seen as an "extra curricular" activity by bosses.
In Australia, Message Labs says it now blocks 6000 employee attempts a day to access social networks, up from 2000 ten months ago.
Security concerns meant the Maryland Sate Legislature in the US has banned Facebook and MySpace from official machines....despite 40 legislators having Facebook pages.
The other month we looked at some of the corporate social network policies that Aussie blogger Laurel Papworth had uncovered. What was instructive was that they by and large came from the media, tech and Govt sector. Missing? Major retailers, FMCGs...actually most other sectors.
You don't even have to be an employee. In response to a Fortune article debunking the myth that Apple has banned Facebook, one reader claimed Hilton customer services told her Facebook was off limits in its US hotels (I assume on Hilton owned machines)
And the list goes on.
My personal point of view on this is clear.
1 - You can delay the social networking tide of work but just like email bans in the mid 90s, it will ultimately be futile.
Indeed, another survey, this one by WebSense carried out among 1300+ global IT professionals found that 86% felt under pressure to provide a greater level of web 2.0 access while 47% said that their people try to by-pass the restrictions that are in place.
2 - Certainly in marketing departments knowledge of social networks is a useful - no must have - skill. Conversely it's a huge hindrance to your job not to be able to access networks where people are talking about you.
3 - As part of the Australian Message Lab study mentioned above, Telstra Business Executive Director Brian Harcourt said: "If an employee spends as much as an hour a day on Facebook, it can end up costing a business thousands of dollars in lost time over the course of a year."
Call me old fashioned but if you employ adults, shouldn't you treat them like adults? And if they want to waste time, my guess is that they will find ways of doing so, Twitter / Facebook or not.
As an aside, check out this study that was carried out last year about who actually wastes time surfing the Internet on work time. Admin assistants and call centre operators on dead end jobs? No, it's people at the top - the people who don't have someone looking over their shoulder - who are most likely to be 'cyber slackers'!
Image - grumpy.editor
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