Should employers embrace social networking?

[joshwa]

Facebook (etc) is blocked where I work as "Personals and Dating"* - but like others have said - if you allow personal web browsing then why not facebook as well? A good solution would be the limit on time, for example, we allow 1 hours personal lunchtime browsing on entertainment, sports, etc, but still block facebook, a better solution would be to allow facebook as well at lunch times... if someone does have 1 hour for lunch and wants to spend it on the internet, why block facebook, but sports is okay for an hour? What difference does it make when people are on lunch?

* incorrectly in my mind - surely it should be categorised as "Social Networking"

[rich_jtg]

Facebook was recently blocked at our place of work... the official reason given was that it was seen as a security risk, rather than the time wasting aspect.

I've never been on the site myself (at work or home), but a quick wander around the office would result in seeing many people browsing and updating their profile pages.

[iranu]

This makes me laugh. When I worked for Airbus 2001/2002 they were setting up chat rooms on a pan European network whereby employees could talk about different things. For example, want to talk about wing loading, landing gear materials, software and how it's seen by Configuration (Engineers), best places to stay/see in France/Britain/Spain etc and allsorts then you could set them up but ofcourse a business case had to be made. So work-related-social-networking was encouraged because it was seen as producing a homogeneous company across many countries with differences in language and culture.

Anyway I think the whole thing about Facebook etc at work is a non-starter. Would I get bollocked or annoy the entire office if I spent a good hour a day chatting to someone on the phone? Of course I would. I'm there to work not to piss about wiv me m8s! The difference is with a PC it doesn't annoy anyone. Yep, I will use the phone on a personal level, but I don't abuse it and if I want to surf then I do it on my break.

I think this is a problem for smaller companies as ours has a big IT set up and therefore monitors quite strictly what can be viewed and for how long. Facebook etc isn't banned, but anyone spending disproportionate amounts of time would be disciplined.

[zodiacman]

facebook also blocked were i work,people spending too much time updating apparently

[Fortunate Son]

At my work you can only get on hotmail between 12 and 2, something similar with these networking sites would be a solution

[Jay]

I gave people access to facebook on their dinner hour as long as it wasn't abused. within the first week the logs showed that nearly everyone abused the right during work hours so it was blocked.

[Fennie]

I gave people access to facebook on their dinner hour as long as it wasn't abused. within the first week the logs showed that nearly everyone abused the right during work hours so it was blocked.

Exactly trust people first then take their privileges away if they choose to push/abuse it. We're looking into introducing this into work too. I work for a software company and we embrace all sorts of networking tools/sites, which is great if it helps us communicate and share our ideas better but not when it becomes purely for personal use.

[PeteSmith]

In larger companies i certainly think there is a case for using certain social networking tools, we are currently using Yammer, which has been embraced although you can probabably argue how effective it has been. It helps to promote new inititives if used properly, gain insight into inter-department and cross department working. Of course some people perhaps spend more time on Yammer than they do actually being productive. (cough Hexus.net ).

Slightly off-topic and without wanting to detract too much from the original theme - I'm trying to find an appropriate solution for internal CRM, a concept where we look at internal stakeholder engagement, what people are working on and who is talking to who. We see real benefit in this but finding suitable candidates from the enterprise 'off the shelf' market is quite difficult due to the speciality functionality we require. Has anyone had any good experience in creating bespoke CRM packages for smaller user bases? Long shot worth a try...

[oolon]

Would not "work related social networking" be "Professional Networking"?

[Blitzen]

I am an employer, and i can 100% say that is not acceptable.

If someone working for me has time to go to Facebook/Twitter/MySpace etc, then they are no good to me.

I would go down any/all discipline routes available up to and including dismissal.

[Terbinator]

Thread revival much ?

[Saracen]

I am an employer, and i can 100% say that is not acceptable.
....

Presumably, you mean not acceptable to you?

It is, of course, a decision every employer should have the right to make. Some may find it utterly unacceptable, but others may not.

As far as I'm concerned, whether it's acceptable or not is down to the employer, just like whether to allow personal phone calls, or a variety of other things, is. And as with those phone calls, many employers may take the stance that, within reason, it's okay. A couple of minutes now and then is one thing, but 90 minutes a day to the boyfriend in Australia is a different proposition .... and I knew someone that did exactly that.

Similarly, many employers would not mind office equipment being used fir the odd photocopy or two, but large volumes would be a different matter.

And I think that sums up the acceptability of social networking to employers .... it's up to the employer. But ..... using work time or work resources for personal use should always be with the employer's permission, and kept to within reasonable levels. Sadly, there's always a few that will abuse any leeway, and often ruin it for everyone else in the process.

[spoon_]

We block all of these at work so deff my vote goes toward option number 4.

Before people could stay all day long on FB and chat about sh**, pretty unproductive from employers point of view. Teenage birds coming in as a temps where literally taking a p***

Thanks god its all over now!

[chuckskull]

Can't resist

[razer121]

LOL, wow some people eh?

On topic, FB should be blocked as it's for personal use not work.

[jim]

To be honest, I don't like the idea of blocking things.

My dad was at work a couple of years ago, and they genuinely said to him "We've got absolutely nothing for you to do for the next week or so. You've still got to turn up to get paid, but there's nothing that needs doing."

Courtesy of the work's filter, that meant spending a few very long days doing very very little. Equally we can talk about lunch-breaks, time after your working day has finished, unpredictable reasons why you need to use a banned resource, so on.

I hate systems that presume guilt, because it makes the innocent suffer for no reason. I understand that in some situations it's necessary, e.g. airport security, but facebook in a workplace? Really?

At the end of the day, if someone is spending 2 hours a day on facebook, then I'd hope that their manager would notice their lack of productivity. If not, then A) the manager needs to be sacked, and B) that position is surplus to requirements. If someone is spending 5 minutes on facebook a day, then maybe a lot of managers would say that's fine. Introducing a blanket ban is a pretty daft way of implementing it in my eyes.