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."
Now if they'd study slashdot use at work ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be interested in what they'd say about slashdot use at work and whether they'd rate it as a net gain or loss for the company.
Though I suppose it would depend on how the user used it...
Re:Water-cooler talk (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference is that the people at the water cooler are people who are likely to be peripherally related to your job, with expertise relavant to your job.
Sure SOME people will have some 'work-related/work-useful facebook friends' but most of the people I see at work on facebook are just goofing off with their boy/girlfriends and drinking friends planning their weekend/party/whatever.
I'm not saying it can't happen that you've got a guru facebook buddy who helped you fix a perl script... but that's the exception, not the norm.
Amazing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah I'll send this to HR right away (Score:4, Interesting)
...I'm sure they'll reverse all their decisions immediately.
At work email sites, social networking and YouTube are blocked. It smacks of not trusting your employee to do work but there are PR implications if it gets out that employees are slacking.
We also have a download proxy that filters everything for virii (and often stuffs up large downloads since it returns its own download progress page). I can't blame my employer for protecting their assets, especially since a virus outbreak where I work has even worse PR implications, but at the same time I wish there were a better way than this.
The way it is at the moment, some days I don't get time to download anything and don't even think about whether I'm blocked or not, other days it just gets in the way of getting work related content, and on a few rare days where there's little to do it would be nice to have access to these things. This has all been implemented since I joined s few yers ago, and it's certainly not enough to change jobs over on it's own, but it's another thing that has made looking elsewhere in the future a little more palatable. I'm also no longer permitted to play chess on my personal laptop at my desk at lunch time or after work any longer as "it gives the wrong impression", and that really stinks. Telling your employee you don't trust them, and eroding the employee's non-monetary benefits doesn't exactly do wonders for morale...
Re:Now if they'd study slashdot use at work ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Most IT staff read slashdot, and have few friends. Ergo social sites are okay to block. ;-)
(It's true for my company... but to be fair most facebook apps are probably security nightmares.)
Our local IT group is going the extra mile for us though. With the new faceless corporate data centre laying the proxy block-down, we now get wireless routers on an extranet for personal browsing. That's pretty damn impressive actually, and just in time to enjoy my new iTouch.
Not if you want to stay at a govenrment contractor (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd rather stay away from the networking sites. I need to keep my clearance to keep my job. Make enough noise and they start wondering what else you're up to. This is not negotiable with most similar positions. It's agreed to as a term of employment.
Agreed (Score:4, Interesting)
I use my facebook to network. 90% of my "friends" on facebook are past clients, programmers, project managers, executives, creatives, ... I've worked with as a consultant. It helps you to keep track, keep a certain connection and allow you utilize your network inthere, in a slightly more casual way... With other tools it's harder to maintain your network and have more of a feel with your network, and what they're busy with: after a while the image of someone waters down because of the excess of contacts as a consultant, so if you have a face and the conveyed personality you can more easily reconnect with how the person is/was while you worked with them.
It also helps teamspirit in a company: we've created a company group, post our company events, show off to eachother the events we've ended up with with clients and just fool around, have a bit of competitive fun as well. It creates a more tight bound with all our consultants and is just plain fun! Happy, fun developers are productive ones.
Re:Facebook (Score:1, Interesting)
its not always a trust issue. some companies cant afford to expand there bandwidth. Ive worked with companies were we had to block sites to ensure that people who were working would be able to work.
Blocking those sites actually gave us the time needed to research options in the area.
Also didnt hurt that we discovered that a few employees were going to porn sites as a result of the filter.