I hear questions like these a lot at conferences – How do I stop my employees from wasting time on Facebook? or What do I do with an employee who is spending too much time on Facebook?
My responds is always the same – You don’t have a Facebook problem you have an employee problem. What would you do if that employee were spending too much time at the water cooler? Or on the phone with his girlfriend? Or playing solitaire all day? For some reason when people are presented with an old problem in a digital format they focus on the format and not the problem.
Ask some important questions – is this employee getting their work done? If the answer is yes, well then you need to decide if you really have a problem or if you just a problem with Facebook. If they were spending time doing something else like chatting at the water cooler how would you feel? What if they were doing something less visible? Like emailing friends or playing solitaire or watching last nights episode of Lost or reading the news online?
If the answer is no he is not getting his work done, then blocking Facebook won’t solve your problem. This person will find another way to spend their time, walking around, playing solitaire, watching last night’s episode of Lost, reading the news. You need to address the problem not the symptom. Blacklisting Facebook will only cause more problems.
“Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships.” – Peter Bradwell
Measuring productivity in time is an assembly line mentality, working 8 hours produces 200 widgets, lose time and you lose widgets. In today’s knowledge workplace that doesn’t translate, taking breaks make workers more productive.
“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 day’s work, and as a result, increased productivity.” – Dr. Brent Coker
It is important for employees to socialize with coworkers to brainstorm and share ideas which leads to improved productivity and performance. In a knowledge worker environment an employees peers, his knowledge network, are more likely to be across the country than in the office next door.
Studies that accuse social networks of reducing productivity assume that time spent microblogging is time strictly wasted. But that betrays an ignorance of the creative process. Humans weren’t designed to maintain a constant focus on assigned tasks. We need periodic breaks to relieve our conscious minds of the pressure to perform — pressure that can lock us into a single mode of thinking. – Brendan I. Koerner
Treating employees like the competent, intelligent adults that you hired (and if you’re not hiring competent intelligent adults you have a much larger problem) goes a long way to improving moral which improves productivity.
During the same time that Facebook grew from 100 million users to 200 million and Twitter went Oprah (March ’08 to March ’09) U.S business sector productivity has increased 2.0 percent. This is a bit off the recent historic rate 2.5% – but I don’t think anyone during this recession is blaming that on Twitter.
Companies that think they may have a productivity problem because of social networks and the like actually have a measurement problem – that is – they don’t know how to objectively measure whether an employee is meeting standards of productivity. In the absence of clear measurement – they resort to punitive actions (blocking these sites, monitoring employee behavior) that can damage morale and trust.
Lastly, most companies don’t recognize that they often expect employees to check email after hours and bring work home when needed. If this is the expectation then blocking employees from accessing these social sites during “work hours” is not a fair bargain – Joshua-Michéle Ross
Let me be perfectly clear I am not advocating that you ignore a productivity problem or a problem employee, but address the problem not the symptom.
Resources:
- Bosses ‘should embrace Facebook’
- If You’re Measuring Productivity In Hours, You’re Doing It Wrong
- Report: Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments
- How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive
- Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go
- Want Innovation? Get Out of the Way
- Sneaky YouTube, Facebook peeks point to better productivity
- How Social Networks Network Best
- The ROI of being social at work
- Social Media: Does It Help or Hinder Productivity?
- The Productivity Myth: Step Away From the Twitter – Get Back to Work
Librarian by Day 
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