With Fewer Staff Will Companies Respond by Blocking Access to Social Media in the Workplace
October 21st, 2008 by Daniel Young | Filed under Social media, Technology.
Dealing with the YouthForce
The Millenials and Gen Ys are an increasingly important segment of our workforce. This demographic has had the luxury of a prosperous economy during their teenage years and adult life. They haven’t experienced an economic downturn or heaven forbid – an R!
Accenture coined the term user-determined computing. The relates to the increasingly tech savvy workforce and the dramatic increase in the availability of free, customisable and easy to implement software.
The Accenture argument goes that new technology within the workforce is just as likely to be deployed by users as it is by the IT department, which poses the question: How much control should IT (the business) exert over its users in the Web 2.0 world?
In recent years, we’ve seen social networking applications, instant messenging, RSS readers and so on enter the workforce in a big way. They may or may not be being used for work related activities.
Companies are presented with four options:
Get Back to Work Make a Phone Call!
BLOCK: Prevent access to social networks, sites and services that aren’t obviously related to work.
TRUST: Allow access and leave workers to discover their own professional uses for the technology.
APPLY: Work with employees and third party consultants to identify ways in which the technology can be applied to work. Lay down guidelines for the use of social media and other tools in partnership with staff and communicate these guidelines.
MANAGE: Tap into workers enthusiasm for online communication by rolling out a Facebook-like platform for internal (and external with trusted partners) company communications.
Telstra and Channel 7 are two companies in Australia that have received negative media coverage for blocking access to social networks (Facebook in both cases).
It will be interesting to see how the issue of the tightening economy and the use of social networks in the work place converge during the next twelve months. We’ve seen a rash of retrenchments in Australia and around the world, which looks likely to continue.
Recent research by the people at Wikinomics found that 50% of the Net Generations surveyed spend more than 2 hours every day using work technologies (Internet, IM etc.) to complete non-work tasks.
My bet would be that corporations will increasingly opt to BLOCK as staff are cut back.
The forward thinking companies will respond to this issue by trying to find ways to use new technology to increase productivity in the workplace rather than adopting the punitive BLOCK mentality.
Here are the results from Wikinomics:
Disclosure: Accenture is a client.
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Tags: Bebo, facebook, Friendster, Gen Y, Generation, IM, Millenials, myspace, Net, Recession, Social media
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Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
I couldn’t agree more. What I would add (in relation to the Wikinomics stats) is that if Gen Ys were feeling motivated and challenged – they’d spend less time on non work related activities. To me, these results aren’t just indicative of Gen Y’s heavy use of technology – it could also indicate that they’re not engaged by the business and are probably bored.
As you mention above, smart companies will look at how they can use new technology to improve productivity – you’ve written about Yammer before which is a great example of this.
For those who have a young workforce, technology such as this is a great idea because to communicate effectively with employees you need to use their preferred communication method. For Gen Y, Web 2.0. could be a winner!
As for those organisation’s that take the blocking route – Great idea. And while they’re at it, why not demand mobile phones be switched off at work. Track personal phone calls on land lines – no even better – record them. Map employee movements (a ploy I’ve personally been involved in – very humorous actually) or better still make office detention anklets compulsory.