We all have smartphones anyway: Social Media Policy
"Humans have a natural proclivity to want what they cannot have. "Greg Ferenstein,Mashable
Legitimate Concerns with Social Media in the Workplace
- Intranet security: Malware may be inadvertently downloaded and spread.
- Bandwidth. Potentially a significant expense:
- 6.8% of all websites visits go to Facebook. 10% of all corporate bandwidth is taken up watching Youtube Videos.
"It is commercially unwise to have a bandwidth free-for-all, especially when you consider that downloading a single half-hour TV show consumes more bandwidth than receiving 200 emails a day for a year."Mark Hutchinson,Managing Director,Telindus
Evidence in Favour of Social Media in the Workplace
“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t. “It’s the same in the work place. Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.” Dr Brent Coker,Department of Management and Marketing,University of Melbourne
Productivity:
- If your people are still meeting their deadlines, then does it matter if they spend their down time on Facebook?
- Why do they have so much downtime? Fair question - You're paying them to work 8 hours a day, but they seem to get their work done in about 4. Fine, their obviously very productive people. Give them more responsibility. They obviously know how to increase operational efficiency and could help you do this business wide. It's your employees who aren’t connected to the rapidly evolving business climate around them that you can't afford to keep.
- I think the issue has more to do with perception: Your peers walk past your work station and seeing you on Facebook, creating an impression that you're not working.
There's no reason to treat your people like children or residents of some military junta run state.
- When phones were first introduced in the workplace, they were banned for personal calls.
- Today anyone can pick up the phone and tip of the press.
- The point is, your people are not going to. You hired them because you trust them to do a job. That trust needs to extend to how they conduct themselves in the workplace.
- Further, you have signed contracts with them through which they have agreed to adhere by your policies.
So you don't understand social media and you've heard that its all hype and more likely to cause sensitive information to leak out of the office and harm your brand. Who did you hear that from?
- Well then you need to learn social media and set an example for how its used in your organisation because not engaging will do even more harm. A very visible conversation is happening and if you're not participating, then your communications team can't manage your online reputation.
To succeed in Social Media, it needs to become part of your corporate DNA
Win new clients and give customers a unique experience they can't find anywhere else. To be able to create these remarkable marketing campaigns, your people need to have a practical understanding of the channel. It has been common place to hire an agency, but unless you have some familiarity with the channel, how do you know what to look for in an agency? The inevitable result will be paying too much, getting burned and taking a hiatus from social media.
A first step. 3 options that can streamline information sharing and enhance collaboration that is currently faciliated by legacy project management tools:
- http://www.socialcast.com/
- Yammer.com: Your company's very own version of Twitter - with a 99% SLA
- A Wiki: These group collaboration systems are simple, customizable and used by multimillion dollar companies.
“Since I’ve started at Google, I’ve been extremely impressed how well the internal version of Google Buzz (Google Buzz) works to facilitate routing important information to people who need to hear it, and facilitate fast reactions.” Tim Bray, Developer Advocate, Google Inc.
Launch a pilot program to prove the concept. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
And besides, since most of us own or will be getting smartphones, we can access social media at work anyway. - Corporate policy be damned.
Take the Social Media in the workplace survey. If you're an employer: Do you have a block access to social media? Why? Answer in the comments. If you're an employee: Do you use social media during work hours? How? Please leave your answer in the comments section.
