11 May 2011
Half of UK employees are banned from using social networking site Facebook, according to a survey from software development firm HCL Technologies.
According to a report in the Telegraph, management fears over corporate reputation are behind the restrictions.
In September last year, senior council officer Rehana Mohamed provoked widespread anger for comments she made about servants on social media site Twitter.
Many CIOs advise a cautious approach to social media.
Clifford Burroughs, CIO at consumer goods company United Biscuits, told Computing last month that he has set up a group within his firm to trial the use of Twitter.
"Social media and collaborative tools are useful to the business, but we're still quite cautious about access to things like Facebook and Twitter. We've set up a super-surfers group, which will be able to access these tools, and we're still trying to contain that until we understand the wider benefits."
Similarly, Adam Gerrard, while working as CIO at car hire firm Avis, agreed that the first priority is to protect the brand reputation.
"A lot of firms are trying to find value in social media, but there is a need to protect the brand, which can prevent full use of this channel. Anything that people say is out there forever," he said in December.
This isn't just about facebook, but putting 'social media' and 'facebook' into your press release guarantees you a lot of coverage, not least because the work 'facebook' is a great search term and gets the publisher traffic from google.
In practise, reputation is a secondary concern - the real reason that facebook is banned in so many organisations is productivity: simply put, business management ask IT to investigate how long staff are spending on facebook and are horrified to find that for many staff, it is all day. Most enterprises will have tools that are effective in blocking sites - and facebook is a long way from the only site banned: bluecircle and other gambling sites, porno sites, holiday booking sites, BBC iPlayer, sports pages etc are also blocked routinely.
It is simple for the employer to deal with this effectively and manage both productivity and reputation risk: have your HR department draft an Acceptable Use Policy for online and make it part of your employment contract so staff have a clear understanding of what is and what is not acceptable and you can discipline staff who overstep the line.
Outright banning however, is not a good solution. Most organisations want their staff to 'like' their corporate facebook page, so it stands to reason that stopping them from accessing it is counterproductive - indeed it might prompt employee resent and even generate the very reputational damage which they are trying to avoid.
Posted by: Lord Gaga 12 May 2011
Almost everybody has access to social media on their handset and personal computers, so trying to implement a ban seems like a total waste of time. Employees need to be educated on social media privacy and suffer consequences for misuse, which might range from a warning to outright dismissal. Prohibition only leads to innovation and there are already so many ways to get around it!
Posted by: Sarah Lafferty 11 May 2011
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