Whitepaprs

White Paper Excerpt

Companies have often played catch-up in understanding how to harness new technologies without over-managing them. In the early years of the World Wide Web, in the mid- to-late 1990s, many organizations feared that employees would spend too much time idly surfing the Web, so they tried to control access. While some employees undoubtedly did waste time that way, many soon figured out how to unlock the power of the Internet to do their jobs better, and the Internet quickly became a tremendously valuable resource for conducting desktop research, tracking competitors and other corporate activities.

The latest technology innovation to hit the workplace is social media—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, Plaxo, Hi5 and Second Life—that let individuals connect, communicate and share information with revolutionary ease and power.

The growth of these social networks has been staggering, and people are using them everywhere, including in the workplace. That’s what has business leaders worried. What are their concerns and how realistic are they?

Productivity loss. While one recent study estimates that social networking costs companies in the U.K. £1.38 billion annually in lost productivity, it’s unclear just how severe or widespread the problem really is.1 A new Manpower survey of nearly 34,400 employers worldwide found that just 20 percent of companies surveyed have a formal policy regarding the use of social networks, and of those, 63 percent say their policy is effective in avoiding productivity loss.2 Just as with Web surfing, there may be little a company can do to forcibly curtail use of Facebook or Ning. If you cut off access altogether, employees can just pull out their iPhones and BlackBerries to get onto these networks.

As social networking increases in popularity, employees, especially younger ones, will blur the distinction between the work use of social media and personal use, redefining the very meaning of work. Employers must get ahead of this curve, finding ways to use social media itself to help employees achieve the proper balance.

Tagged as

collaboration, facebook, innovation, knowledge management, linkedin, ning, recruitment, reputation management, social networking, twitter