Someone once asked a question on Linkedin about how much say should a company have in internal social media usage i.e. if you’re helping them use social media to promote their brand and at the same time spending some time on your personal Twitter account, should your boss be allowed to tell you that you aren’t reading proper work material because he/she is following your tweets? Should a company own your social media products? Where is the line drawn between personal and corporate social media property? This is the answer I provided.
Perhaps, we’ve tended to over think on this. At the end of the day, Facebook, Twitter, AIM are essentially tools which are used by folks to communicate with each other. Of course, since they’re social media it’s possible to do much more in terms of social interactions. During business hours and while working on company-provided equipment, your productivity should be geared at providing as much value as you can for the company. Sure, you might take a quick break and check up on your Facebook account for a few minutes. But, that’s it.
Here’s the thing : Most people working on jobs here have a set of long-term strategic goals that they need to deliver by a deadline and daily tasks that require to be fulfilled. If they’re able to perform up to expectations and complete their daily tasks on time, why should a company stop them from taking a break and maybe chatting with a pal on Facebook?
Let’s not confuse this issue with personal social media and company social media. An individual’s Facebook account and what he does with it on his own time should be of no concern to a company unless he discusses work related topics in there. That’s when issues of confidentiality come in – if someone is imbecilic enough to discuss his work projects with a friend not working in the same company, he could be violating his company’s confidentiality rules. A company’s social media platform could be internal collaboration tools like a TWiki platform residing within the safe confines of their Intranet where employees can collaborate freely and exchange ideas and thoughts on specific topics. I’ve seen organizations use TWiki along with an IM tool (AIM) where two employees message each other for quick clarifications etc. Some companies have even been able to cut phone costs as employees so used to IM use this medium to communicate, say at airports or conferences and save some serious $$.
Too much control, however, on the work activities of employees could result in a drone-like work environment in a company which would be bereft of creativity and innovation. Let’s be honest here. No matter what controls an organization has in place to manage productivity, there’s bound to be the less-than-adequate employee who whittles away time.
My recommendation to organizations is embrace this change fully. Tomorrow, we’ll see people manage their lives around social networks – People are now posting photos & videos of their weddings, trips etc on Facebook, they’re connecting with old friends and sustaining relationships on there, they’re even using the Facebook messaging platform to communicate with each other (A question if social network messaging will replace traditional webmail is another answer altogether) and now with Facebook chat, they can talk to their contacts in real time. We’re already seeing organizations use social networks to create connections around their products. Additionally, they advertise on them as well. MySpace now has hyper-targeting advertising where you can focus your message towards a specific segment of users. I’d rather see my employees be up-to-date with these new digital ecosystems and leverage this knowledge to identify new clusters of customers, obtain ideas for new products and processes, help me cut costs and help the organization understand the new trends online.
The other option is to ban all this activity during work hours and then hire a grossly overpaid consultant as he knows more about what’s out there than my workforce. Note that if I were to see a distinct reduction in productivity and performance, I would then take steps to understand why this was happening, identify the cause and remedy it. But, to merely assume the access and usage of social networks during work hours will be non-productive to an organization is an ignorant assumption, and I’d like to think that the folks who advocate the same are not aware of the real potential of these platforms.
