90 Percent of IT Managers Want Social Networks Banned at Work
By Anna Johnson on November 11th, 2009Research by United Kingdom based Bloxx indicates that 90 percent of IT managers in both the public and private sectors in the U.K. believe access to social networking sites should be banned or restricted.
Bloxx found that such IT managers were predominately concerned that allowing access to social networks would be detrimental to staff productivity, as well as give rise to network security risks, and potentially undermine corporate reputation.
Meanwhile, Bloxx found that around 22 percent of survey respondents didn’t have any controls in place for staff accessing social networks, with 35 percent of IT managers believing that staff were averaging over 30 minutes per day accessing social networks.
Commenting on the study, Web Pro News’s Chris Crum disagrees that social networks can be blamed for productivity losses. He sums it up pretty well by saying:
“I really don’t see that the use of social networks is really that different than any other form of simply not working.”
Exactly!
How may studies have we seen about Internet access lowering productivity… email lowering productivity… casual dress lowering productivity… open office plans lowering productivity… telephones lowering productivity… lunch breaks lowering productivity…
How many studies do we need to see about this or that lowering productivity before we realize that, as Chris Crum indicates, things like social networks don’t waste time… PEOPLE waste time.
Internet entrepreneurs and startups would have to be some of the most productive workers in the world… do you reckon they ban access to the Internet, email, casual dress, open offices, telephones, lunches or social networks? No – they harness all those things to be MORE productive. (Yes, including lunches).
Sure, we all goof off now and again, but it’s not because of THINGS distracting us, it’s because WE let ourselves become distracted by things.
And, let’s face it, if some people are spending excessive amounts of time doing anything – whether having long lunches or spending too much time on social networks – it’s probably because they really don’t like their jobs and should be in some other line of work!
Meanwhile, Chris Crum makes another invaluable point: banning social networks may not only make no difference to productivity but may well be detrimental to a given organization. For example, it doesn’t seem to make sense for a company to ban access to a given social network if it turns out that it’s main target market regularly visits that social network. You know, understanding the customer and all that?
Source: Chris Crum, “Social Networks Don’t Waste Time, People Do,” WebProNews
November 12th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I was going to disagree with the premise of the article, and comment that the Internet is a time waster. Then I thought, no, I agree with Mr Crum. But not because of the reasons noted in the article. Hardly. Mr Crum cetainly has a wheelbarrow to push here. His work position necessitates that. So one can discount much of what he says. While I agree that it is people who waste time, I think it is systems that allow that to happen. Comment is made about how people moan that such things as dress standards might alter work habits. I don’t know about that. Yet I will comment (albeit with tongue in cheek) that I might have been less interested in wasting time looking at young women who wore the old fashioned 1960′s version of a bank officer’s uniform than I might be looking at the current version. Isn’t that change in dress code part of the system? And let’s not forget the modern smoking prohibitions. We can no longer smoke indoors. But think about the lost man hours when smokers absent themselves from working on a regular basis in order to try and kill themselves (says a reformed smoker) So maybe if the system did not have the distraction of the Social Media more work might be the result. Whatever. The system these days is to maximise pleasure time, not work, anyway. We need to get used to that.