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CO31 THE STRATEGIC PATH TO CONVERGENCE & COllAbORATION
S
ocial networking sites like Facebook,Twitter and MySpace are in vogueat the moment. They have becomeestablished forums for keeping in contactwith old acquaintances and meetingnew ones, but do they have a place inthe workplace? What are the concernsand, on the upside, what are the usesthese might have?
prODUctivitY
A report from SurfControl (now Websense)received a lot of coverage towardsthe end of 2007 when it claimed thatemployees are more likely to be whilingaway the hours on a social networkingsite than slaving over a project. The reportestimates that if an employee spends anhour each day on Facebook, it costs the
Have you been
Counting the costs,and benefts, o social networking
by CAROl SkyRING-dAUNT,FOUNdER & CEO OFlEARNTEl PTy lTd
 
SEE EVEN MORE INFO AT WWW.STRATEGICPATH.COM.AU CO32
company more than $6,200 a year andmay be costing Australian businesses$5 billion a year. It ound that someemployers were restricting employees’internet use or blocking the sites, butothers are establishing protocols orusing social websites. In some cases,social networking sites have replacedinternal messaging systems and emails.While this might be o concern, socialnetworking sites are not the only wayemployees can avoid work. How many jokes are emailed around the ofce andto riends? How many people shop onlineor use the internet to research consumergoods rom cars to DVDs? And howdoes this stack up against the time thesmokers spend around the corner o thebuilding eeding their habit?Social networking tools can actually makeemployees more efcient and streamlinecommunication. Facebook, or example,has many work-related apps. Theserange rom to-do lists and email to acalendar app with SMS reminders anda built-in to-do list unction. There’s anonline ofce app that is a collaborativetool where you can work on documents,spreadsheets and presentations, andthen request collaborative eedback roma group in Facebook. The list goes on.These can be valuable tools or small andmedium sized organisations that don’thave the budget or IT inrastructure toset up these types o productivity toolsin-house.
privacY
Another survey conducted by Sophosaround the same time revealed that50% o workers are being blocked romaccessing Facebook by their employers,who are worried about the website’simpact on productivity and security andhave put policies or access controls inplace to ban its use in the workplace.Sophos created an interesting pieceo ‘research’ where they abricated aFacebook profle or ‘Freddi Staur’, asmall green plastic rog who divulged
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The reality about productivity and Facebook
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Can social network beneft your business
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Sensible precautions
 
CO33 THE STRATEGIC PATH TO CONVERGENCE & COllAbORATION
minimal personal inormation abouthimsel. Freddi sent out 200 randomriend requests and 82 people accepted,thereby giving the rog access to theirinormation. Although an interestingexercise, it hardly meets the criteria orresearch rigour – but what can be drawnrom it?The main concern revolves aroundthe act that a large number o socialnetworking profle pages contain users’current employment details, which couldbe used together with other stoleninormation by cyber criminals benton committing corporate raud, or toinfltrate company networks. To a lesserextent, companies are concerned thatemployees may be writing material orpublishing photographs and videos thatmay cast the company in an embarrassinglight.Just about anyone can read what’s postedon to social networking sites and mucho what is posted can never be deleted.Once something appears on the internet,it’s almost impossible to remove – evenater it’s been deleted it will be cachedsomewhere.On the upside, most employees don’taccept random ‘riend’ requests (theyunderstand the issues o privacy) andthey’re circumspect with companyinormation.
wOrkplace USe
Some companies actually encouragetheir employees to use social networkingsites. Flight Centre is one that endorsesthe use o Facebook. They think it’s avaluable tool when used appropriately,or example to interact with each otherand clients to share travel photos andinormation. At the time o writing thegroup had 399 members and you musthave a valid Flight Centre email addressto join this network. The company’spolicy requests sta to be respectul oFlight Centre’s reputation when usingthe company’s name or logo online.A quick scan o Facebook shows hundredso work groups have a presence there– whether ofcially sanctioned by thecompany or not. The IBM network has33,579 members, NAB has 2,703 andTelstra has 5,981. The decision to allowsocial networking in the workplacedepends entirely on the type o operationyou’re in and needs to be taken on acase-by-case basis. It seems much more
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