There is a social problem when 55% of Australian workers call out their employers for banning access to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites, according to yesterday’s report in the Courier Mail.
Unhappy employees are rebelling.
Almost one in three (28 per cent) hid their screen from their boss so they could network undetected; almost one-in-four 18-to-24-year-olds said they shirked extra work to make time for social networking; and 17 per cent skipped lunch to justify work time spent networking.
A big majority (66 per cent) believed Facebook was for work as well as play and accepted work colleagues’ “friends requests”.
I agree with Laurel Papworth (whose blog and tweets I respect) for saying many companies treat social networks more as parties and less as business resources. “The best and brightest businesses will benefit from harnessing the potential of an ambitious, hyper-connected workforce,” she said.
As proof, I point you to a list that Josh Peters compiled of 30 Facebook applications for business, from blog promotion, to networking and communication, to sharing audio and video files.
Companies need to change their mindset–and governments must follow suit.
Did you catch the story last week out of New Delhi that India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in the name of preventing online security attacks, is restricting its diplomats from accessing social networking sites, writing blogs, and using webmail?
A circular issued last week asked officials not to log on to social networking sites, specifically citing Facebook, Orkut and Ibibo as examples. The other prohibited practices include download of peer-to-peer music using sites like Kazaa and sharing of photos through Flickr and Picasa.
…But the matter is even more critical for the foreign office as officials posted in Indian missions abroad or on foreign tours tend to use web-based mail rather than the ministry’s own mail system.
Might I suggest that business and government managers contemplating either banning or blocking access to blogs, wikis, email, or social networking sites follow the lead of IBM and their employee-driven social computing guidelines?
Rather than drafting regulations around conference tables, ask the cubicled employees to be the masters of their online museums. Consider that once you have the support of the employees, there will be increased productivity and decreased frustration.
It’s a place to start, anyway.
Photo credit: xplosive
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