Anti-social networking
A new survey of over 2,000 UK employees has revealed that 48 percent of UK businesses have banned social networking sites from the work place over the past year, and that 63 percent said their employers tried to deter them from accessing sites like Facebook and Twitter from work.
Asked why, 45 percent of respondents said their bosses ‘feared business reputation was at stake'. It's easy to see why companies would want to avoid being publicly slagged-off by their own employees, but they can just as easily do so from mobile devices, or when they get home. Furthermore most sensible employees would hesitate before doing so for fear of being sacked.
The survey was conducted by Lewis PR in partnership with HCL Technologies. "It is quite remarkable that in this day and age, many employers are still putting their employees' interests as a low priority by not allowing them to use sites like Facebook," said Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL. "While we always advocate responsible use of social networks in the office, banning them outright will impact employees' approach to work in a negative way, having a detrimental effect on the business as a whole.
"Facebook is such a popular application that is so widely used for personal and business uses, it makes no business sense to ban it, if companies do not address this they could be at the mercy of corporate suicide. Social networking is like food and drink to Generation Y workers, they are so used to communicating in a more open and collaborative way. Therefore, forward looking companies should be aiming to encourage social media activity amongst their employees rather than stifling it."
This does seem vaguely reminiscent of the Internet bans and draconian filters of a decade ago, when companies were worried their employees spent all day surfing for naughtiness, and that would reflect badly on them. Twitter and Facebook have become an intrinsic part of most companies' communications portfolio, so it does seem a bit myopic to just ban them.
