Today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press addressed the ongoing issue of companies who block their employees from accessing their social network Web sites, i.e. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn.
It’s not a new phenomenon. But is the blocking effort actually picking up steam?
Julie Forster’s article cites a survey by the consulting firm Challenger Gray and Christmas who says 22% of companies in the U.S. currently block access to these sites. Nearly one in three employers consider visits to these sites to be a drag on productivity.
The biggest reason for blocking access is if a company feels there’s no business value to having their employees even spend one second on them. But an all day block? What about on the lunch hour?
Shouldn’t companies at least spend some time monitoring employee Web habits before pulling the plug? If one of your workers constantly goes back to the Web every hour to check a newspaper site for the latest news, should that site be blocked too?
PR and social media guru Shel Holtz (who does one of my favorite podcasts by the way, with Neville Hobson) has been after the blockers for quite some time.
His StopBlocking.org says it all. He’s also a big critic of any study that says social networking sites have been a drag on productivity in the office.
Holtz says “…the studies are a load of crap. Not taken into account is the fact that a lot of the time spent on these sites does have a work-related dimension to it. Also not taken into account is the fact that workers put extra time to make up for the time spent online, regardless of whether that time is spent at the office or at home.”
I’m sort of on the fence on some aspects of this. I’ve always felt that my time at the office is not my time. It’s not about surfing the net, buying tickets to an upcoming concert, reading blogs that have nothing to do with the reason I’m at work. But blocking Web or social networking access isn’t the answer to any alleged lost productivity.
Sure, social networking sites can be abused. But how about managing your employees? Communicate your expectations. Deal with the idiots and leave the productive people alone.
Also, the talented 20-somethings who are moving into today’s corporate offices, who many companies desperately need to fill the cubicles, just plain expect social networking to be available in the same way they expect a competitive benefits package. It’s how they communicate. They’ll take their talent and go work for someone else.
No matter what your age, would you accept in a job in a corporate setting that didn’t allow you access to the Internet in general? It’s unheard of.
Remember when companies said they’d never use e-mail in their offices?
Nothing says “We don’t trust you” to an employee better than blocking them from anything deemed inappropriate by management, on the Web.
