Employers You Don’t Have a Facebook Problem You Have an Employee Problem

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:21:55 +0000

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.

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Is Good Enough good enough?

Bobbi Newman — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:59:51 +0000

I don’t know, but it’s what I’m thinking about thanks to Jason Griffey

Think about the services in your library, and the amount of effort and resources poured into making your services as good as they can possibly be. What if good enough is really enough, and instead we should be expanding our range of services instead of seeking perfection in any single one? How does that change the way libraries operate?

He cites a Wired magazine article – The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine which he quotes

…it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough…

Aaron Schmidt responded in the comments

This is great, mostly because just yesterday I was thinking about just the opposite! My thoughts aren’t fully formed but my basic line of thinking is that good enough services are probably wholly unremarkable and don’t leave any sort of impression on our users. Doing Things Right (even if we have to do fewer things) with pride and quality, on the other hand, could make libraries stand out and make our users admire us.

I admire and respect both Jason and Aaron, so as a proper little librarian, I hurried off to do some reading to decide if I agreed with either, both or neither of them.Turns out I’m still not certain.

Sometimes good enough is good enough. Insisting on great product can mean you miss the boat, time wise. It can mean you’re so invested in the finished product that you’re resistant to changing it. It could mean you produce a Porsche when a Saturn could produce the same result, getting you from point A to point B.

Let’s say you can spend a lot of time and money developing a new system or product. Since were talking about libraries and it’s timely lets say it’s a new service that helps patrons find a new job. You could insist that you’ve covered all your bases, considered every possible problem, question and need before you make it available. But while you’re doing that there are people who need your help who aren’t getting it. Or you could make it available when it’s good enough. People will have access to a service they need and you’ll learn as you go what needs improvement. Remember holding on to it until it’s perfect doesn’t guarantee you’ll wont run into problems later. In this case, as long as you’re willing to make modifications as you go along, and you should be, it is good enough.

I can also see problems with doing things that are good enough. Patrons who encounter problems and obstacles to their goals may become frustrated and never come back. They wont be around to know when you’ve improved the system or service.

So I’m not sure where the line is. What do you think?

Librarian by Day » Best Practices

Employers You Don’t Have a Facebook Problem You Have an Employee Problem

Is Good Enough good enough?