Why Companies Shouldn’t Block Social Media in the Workplace
Oct 15, 2009 by Rebecca Kelley | Social NetworksLast week DigitalMediaWire published an article stating that the majority of U.S. companies ban social media sites at work. The stats break down thusly:
- 54% of business block employee access to social networking sites
- 19% allow social networking for work-related purposes
- 16% allow limited personal use
- 10% allow full use
Ironically, according to a study cited in the article, “94% of companies are continuing to invest in online communities and social media.” Over half of U.S. businesses block social media sites at work, yet 94% of businesses are acknowledging the importance of social media and are starting to invest in it? It’s kind of like being a retail business that doesn’t let its employees buy anything.
I’m likely biased because I get paid to tinker around on social media and networking sites, but I do think that businesses should allow responsible and periodical usage of social media at work for the following reasons:
- It helps morale. Everyone needs a mental break from work, and browsing Facebook or sending out a few tweets is no different than surfing the web, reading your email or checking voice messages in terms of time consumed. If you ban social sites, your employees are still going to figure out a way to procrastinate a little bit using the Internet or by taking 20 coffee breaks. Let your employees have a little freedom to stretch their legs and enjoy a little personal time at work — it’ll likely make them happier and more willing to tackle their tasks.
- It builds knowledge of social media. What better way to build up awareness of the value of social media marketing by encouraging hands-on experience? If you ban social media usage at work but appoint some random person in marketing to handle the company’s social media efforts, you could be missing out on the knowledge that other employees can bring to the table. Maybe there’s someone at the office who is really passionate about social networking and knows enough about the subject to bring value to the company. You shouldn’t stifle these people; rather, you should encourage their usage of various sites and networks and maybe even ask for updates on what they’ve learned about existing sites, new sites, etc.
- It can help solve work problems/answer questions by reaching out to large networks. If there’s a work-related question that needs to be answered, it can potentially be resolved by reaching out via a social network like Twitter or LinkedIn. Whenever I’m stumped on an SEO question, I’ve sometimes tweeted the problem and gotten a great slew of helpful answers from my community of followers. Social networks can oftentimes be a great problem-solving tool.
- It can be great marketing for the company. Businesses would probably love for their happy employees to share how great it is to work at Company X — it’s great branding for them and can serve as positive reputation management. I tweet all the time about how I love working for 10e20 and how I have the best coworkers in the world — that’s great for our company and great for business.
Obviously, there are some downsides to letting employees have full reign of social media usage at work. I’ve seen people update their Facebook status complaining about a work task or saying negative things about customers/clients. This sort of behavior is clearly unprofessional and doesn’t reflect well on either the employee or the business. However, I think that a little bit of training and awareness can stifle these sorts of incidents. Clearly state your social media usage policy to new employees and say that while you encourage responsible and occasional usage of social media and networking, be courteous, professional and mindful of the company who’s employing them. Most employees have enough common sense to know what’s acceptable and what’s inappropriate, and the occasional mild slipup should be met with a friendly reminder and meeting about company policy.
However, if you’ve got an employee who constantly complains about work, bitches about coworkers or makes inappropriate comments that can reflect poorly on the company, you should consider whether you want that person on staff instead of wondering if you should block his/her usage at work (after all, it’s easy to fire up the computer at home and make the same disparaging comments).
I think that many businesses can thrive if they educate their employees on proper social media usage and encourage them to network responsibly. I’ll leave you with an interesting Attack of the Show video clip that discusses this topic — it pretty much sums up my sentiments.
What do you think? Is it a black and white issue to block social media at work, or are there more variables that should be considered? Post your comments below or tweet your response to @10e20. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed!
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26 Responses to “Why Companies Shouldn’t Block Social Media in the Workplace”
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It's better to officially denounce the use of social media sites and monitor the use/misuse than to simply block it. If you're going to allow it, however, there had better be a very good reason and strict ground rules or you're opening yourself up for bigger problems than decreased productivity.
Having managed people, I've noticed there's 2 kind of social media (at work) users: the kind that uses it to take a break from work and it in turn INCREASES their productivity. And the kind that uses it to procrastinate and keep from doing work. I'd guess that the latter would find a way (one way or another) to procrastinate no matter what, and that's why they usually didn't last long (and, honestly, it made for a good excuse to let them go). The former, I never mentioned it.
I completely agree with the two different types of social media users at work. People are either responsible or irresponsible with it, and you're right, the ones who use it to procrastinate will find ways to not do their work even if you take social networks away.
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People get distracted with social media sites at work, because they are going to use it more likely for thier own personal reasons instead of work. It can only be beneficial for work purposes if it used solelyto promote the company.
I liked the video – it describes the situation. As for me I believe that blocking is not an effective method to save working time. Everything depends on personal motivation. If a man (or woman, for sure) cares about his (her) working results and performance they will not spend too much time at Facebook or Twitter. But if they don't there are a lot of other things to do instead of working (like smoking, chatting, talking and so on)
And the argument regarding security sounds really silly for me.
People will always find ways to kill time during the day, whether its people playing office pranks or on a social media site you need to have regular breaks to keep you feeling "fresh". Surely its better that someone is networking and promoting their company than playing pranks or going out for a smoke on a regular basis?
And ironically I can't view the video because that too is blocked at work.
[...] surprising is the other half of the study — that 94% of these companies have decided to go digital AND invest in social media [...]
You have some good thoughts on access to external social media- but this also increases risk- some employees simply do not need access to further their work- I myself turn off social media when I need to focus on say proposal or project management or writing content- I DO BELIEVE however 110% that we need INTERNAL Social Computing tools to: 1) retain Tacit knowledge 2) foster community over geography 3) knowledge management 4) humans by nature are social beings *we need to connect*
This is normal social sciences, we connect at a deeper and more meaningful level when the technology enables this to happen. Also corporate knowledge is kept as the Tacit Knowledge is maintained. Information that was once invisible is now visible.
John Seely Brown Xerox PARC Fame had an example from the 1970s- That showcased how knowledge was transferred VIA story telling. We learn through stories- we remember through stories. The Best Buy 'Blue Shirt Nation' team speaks about how operational efficiencies are created when one person tells a story- then someone comments- oh no- you do not have to do all that in the system just press this button and to this. Employees openly share their knowledge in how to have BETTER customer Service and BETTER uses of their technology and process.
Social Media Tools for the Enterprise allow management to develop and nurture the culture of the organisation from a grass roots (ground up) level versus a top down. This improves operational efficiencies, catalyzes disperse groups into one common community, and takes the invisible knowledge of your employees (tacit knowledge) and makes it visible, permanent, achievable.
Of course, none of this applies to the people who do the work. That is those in the warehouse, or those on the assembly line, or those who fill the orders. No, this applies to those who sit in comfy chairs in climate controlled offices and play on their company supplied computers, who place personal orders during work hours, who balance their online check book during work hours; in short those being paid to take care of personal business, also known as theft. If they had a quota to meet, like the actual workers, this story would never have come up.
business employees should only be communicating using internal email, instant messaging services, company mobile phones, and intranet social media sites. In other words, things which leave a complete audit trail.
any use of external social media sites is really just stealing the employers’ money and exposing the company to serious risks
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I have 'actual work' besides when I sit at the computer during down times. If I wanted a job that paid five times more, then I'd get a job that didn't have this perk.
I'm assuming you left this comment during work hours?
You're right, this post applies to people with desk jobs, not manual laborers or assembly line workers.
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The problem isn't quite so black and white. Some employees will totally lose track of the time spent on social media, they will believe they have been on a few minutes at a time several times a day when in reality they have frittered away 2 or 3 hours – goes back to the theft comments-if you are keeping up with your personal business on company time it is theft. Another group is those employees that believe they are "creating relationships" but nothing is measurable. It doesn't matter if you are connected to 30 or 3000 people in social media if it doesn't align with your company goals – which is usually about selling some product or selling some service. It's a tough call either way – you don't want your staff isolated when there is so many voices out there to learn from, but you also don't want to have to hire extra staff because your current staff is so sidetracked they can't get their work completed.
Social Media is disruptive process and technology Enterprise and people are Taking the best of the consumer web into the enterprise and into their daily workflow. Social Media does not have to be public- John Seely brown at Xerox/PARC showed in almost 3 decades ago that storytelling was the method of knowledge transference- and he had employees blog (write their stories on the computer system) the purpose was to take the TACIT KNOWLEDGE – that is the invisible- and make it visible. Social media does this now- archiving relationships and knowledge for future use. Search makes it relevant.
When people think of social media- maybe they are thinking ot the clock puncher playing FARMVILLE- and that is obviously wrong… but Inter-networking say of buyers and purchasers is never bad for business. The power is in the network- remember the network effect- we need to look athte social capitol of individuals as well as the specific role in their organisation.
OLD WORLD thinking- and top down management styles like it or not have little or no relevance in a hyper-linked world. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy ala cluetrain….
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To my mind social websites shouldn't be banned at workplaces – with the help of them employees can promote products and services suggested by the company. But why not to replace ban by soft-core control at workplaces?
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