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.
