Study Shows Social Networking At Work Is Good 94
Ostracus writes "Companies should not dismiss staff who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo at work as merely time-wasters, a Demos study suggests.
Attempts to control employees' use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said."
At least (Score:5, Insightful)
Water-cooler talk (Score:4, Insightful)
Before computers, people engaged in "water-cooler" talk, where much of it was social. But often if you want assistance or approval from other sections or departments, you had to make friends with people by "shootin' the breeze". It's not much different in cyberland. They often say business is about who you know, not what you know.
Re:Now if they'd study slashdot use at work ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Water-cooler talk (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, but not good with the security risks. (Score:1, Insightful)
Social networking at work (and outside of work) IS good however it is bad to utilize an external website such as Facebook/Myspace to fulfill that goal.
Businesses have options to utilize "internal" social networking and collaboration tools (such as Clearspace http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/clearspace) instead of violating networking and security firewall policies by allowing that user to go to an external website to post personal views/etc. This function is a part of any good company and should be kept in-house with the use of purchased or free (open-source) social networking software.
Everything that happens at a company (workflow, production, creativity) is usually property of the company. Why should that info be on an external and "uncontrolled" site versus on an internal server and/or application platform (especially for long-term retrieval such as "hey remember whats his name in programming, he knew a way to. . . ." and that data being on an internal server versus external such as Facebook/Myspace (and possible modified by now and/or removed).
Just my 2 cents - I think internal open-source collaboration server is much much better than allowing users to post personal/work info on any public and uncontrollable website.
Imagine what Sarbanes/Oxley thinks of this study and suggested action in order to increase productivity. Let your employees post work data on a social networking site and you are asking for another Enron (or something of that caliber .. maybe long term but still not worth the risk).
-Rm!
Re:Why the hell would you use Facebook? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two reasons
1. To some people, the benefits of facebook outweigh the risks of the government knowing your favorite movies.
2. Limiting the amount of trivial information availiable is NOT the way to fight big brother. If myspace, facebook, and whatever else were to crumble, as they very well might with the impending dotcom bubble 2.0, that's not going to prevent abuses of privacy. You combat this by voting, by raising awareness, by protesting, letter writing, etc.
To me, it seems kind of like saying "Why would anyone drive on the roads? Your tax money is being used to keep up those roads, and taxes are too high!" Not driving won't lower taxes, and not having a facebook account won't keep you safe from big brother.
Unintended consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
At an outfit I used to work for, we had an internal Usenet set up on out intranet. Hey, it was in the last century! We didn't have all this new fangled technology you young punks take for granted.
But, back to the topic at hand. Management took a dim view of the employees chatting back and forth while at work. So they cracked down on it. That drove the on-line conversations to external sites and encouraged anonymity on them. The end result is that the same conversations go on now as before. But enlightened management has a harder time keeping a finger on the pulse of the workforce by lurking on the newsgroups. And more than once, some sensitive information has made it on to the outside systems where the world (competitors, federal regulators, etc.) can see them.
Great move, PHB!
Re:Why the hell would you use Facebook? (Score:1, Insightful)
You aren't too bright, are you? There's plenty that can be inferred by the "trivial information" in your FaceBook profile: who your friends are, your political beliefs, your religion, what you did last weekend, etc. Plenty of info to deem whether or not you're a "threat" to whoever has access to that huge amount of data about millions of people.
Iron fist of demotivation? (Score:3, Insightful)
a Demos study suggests. Attempts to control employees' use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said.
How about the demotivational impact of having authority used against you, stripping away your own?
At a company where I worked, we had to show up for brief (10m) morning meetings, and we had to hand in our weekly reports saying what we accomplished. If you could make leprechauns write your code while you read slashdot, more power to you. If you had to go shopping for tobacco for five minutes before taking a smoking break (whenever you wanted), off you went. Add wii tennis after lunch and beer plus more wii tennis on fridays :)
They adjusted their hiring policy down a little while I worked there, from "add 90%" to "add 75%" or something like that. Yeah, all that long leash really made people not work, that is why they needed more; not because of the profitability of their work.
If people slack off at work rather than at home, who cares as long as their job is done in time? Employ and pay people based on their ability to provide value, not on how hard they must work to do so. Fire the numbskulls, moneyshower the brainiacs.
not to be the sour apple here, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
sometimes it's very essential to business to control the way in which its employees communicate. If it were my company, I would prohibit company business on any service not explicit in the employee communications manual. (yes, I would write an employee communications manual). Such a manual would lay out a terms of use for using company resources.
Sometimes you have to enact damage control, but it's rarely necessary if your employees know what they can and can't disseminate over services like facebook and twitter.
Lest we forget corporate secrets going out over someone's flickr album. In this new day and age, employees are expected to be productive while communicating readily and instantly with the rest of the social world. There is a way to do it safely. Sometimes you simply must restrict their access if it would damage the company.
This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
... people aren't busy 100% of the time, and attempting to force people to be busy 100% of the time, is more destructive than letting it go.
Wow. Who would have thought?
Seriously, this has been known for quite some time, and any businesses that think they can improve productivity by reducing other options, needs to go back to business school and study leadership and general motivation theory.
Monitoring and punishing people to get them to work harder is industrial revolution style management. We've come a long way since then... baby.
Re:Why the hell would you use Facebook? (Score:3, Insightful)
You aren't too bright, are you? There's plenty that can be inferred by the "trivial information" in your FaceBook profile: who your friends are, your political beliefs, your religion, what you did last weekend, etc. Plenty of info to deem whether or not you're a "threat" to whoever has access to that huge amount of data about millions of people.
Thinking you've foiled big brother by not making a facebook profile? You're the one who isn't too bright.