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07.31.07
Facebook Is The Newest Site For Companies To Block
 By
Shel Holtz
Neville Hobson writes that more than two-thirds of UK companies are blocking access to Facebook and similar sites based on the fear that employees will waste time rather than get work done.
(This according to according to a study reported in the Daily Telegraph).
I wish I could say I was surprised by this, but I was expecting it. The report does, however, afford me the opportunity to list the problems I have with blocking employee access to anything on the web, an exercise I haven't undertaken here in some time. Here goes:
• The productivity myth-Are employees really wasting time? Has anybody in the organization actually measured? Or is work getting done, is it getting done on time, and is it quality work? Most employees will not risk their jobs to screw around online. If they spend an hour online for non-work-related purposes, they'll put in an extra hour to get the job done. That hour may be spent doing work at home, but on the other hand, employees are routinely expected to take work home with them. That's the nature of work-life integration: If you expect me to do work at home, then I expect the employer to tolerate me engaging in non-work activities at work. The measure of productivity is the amount of output created.
• The statistics prove it's a productivity issue-Statistics from companies that sell blocking software is suspect, and that's a charitable characterization. The number of hours an average employee spends surfing (based on more questionable research) is multiplied by the number of employees, and the result is multiplied by an average hourly pay rate to come up with a terrifying "lost productivity" figure. You have to wonder how all that lost productivity can be reconciled against Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis showing producitivity continues to grow. These "studies" don't account for the extra time an employee puts in to compensate for the time spent online, or the regular workload he takes home with him. They're just designed to frighten executives into buying their products.
• There is no business value in Facebook or similar social networks-That's what they said about the web. Remember when nobody could have web access without special dispensation from a member of the executive team, in writing? Then it was message boards. Then instant messaging. It took me less than 30 seconds to find Facebook groups on accounting, engineering, human resources and geology (I once worked for an oil company where good geologists were in high demand).
• We have to-it's a legal issue-Company lawyers objected to email when it was new, fearing that email made it too easy to inadvertently (or intentionally) leak proprietary information. Imagine work without email today. There is a tendency among lawyers to fear new technologies. They had the same worries about fax machines, photocopiers, and even the telephone. Instant Messaging raised legal concerns, but today more than half of U.S. workers use IM for work-related purposes.
• Blocking access is the way to deal with abuse-Companies seeking to build an engaged workforce turn around an send a message to all employees that says, "We don't trust any of you as far as we can throw you." Since engagement requires trust, this is an engagement-killing move. It also can affect business. At one company, instant messaging was shut down when federal requirements for IM record-keeping went into effect; the move was made with no research to determine how important IM had become to the conduct of day-to-day business in this company. At some companies (IBM and Raytheon come to mind), switching off IM would cripple the business. At another company, implementing web filtering software suddenly denied access to websites that hundreds of employees used to do their work. Sites needed to obtain data could not be made available for weeks, due to a convuluted IT process, even though employees needed them immediately. At one healthcare company, all blogs are blocked based on the belief that blogs contain no valuable content, despite the presence of thousands of healthcare-related blogs, including influential ones like Eye on FDA, for example, that could provide a lot of employees with valuable intelligence.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
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