Does Your Employer Block Social Media Sites?

According to an article in PC World by Jon Brodkin, nearly one in four businesses block employee access to social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace,according to a survey of about 200 human resources professionals.

The poll was conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consulting firm that surveyed human resources pros at a recent conference hosted by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Findings of the poll are confusing to say the least. According to the Brodkin article, the Challenger survey showed seemingly contradictory information. While many companies didn't view social networking as a threat to productivity, one in three survey respondents said their companies consider the sites a major drain on worker output.

Isn't a major drain on worker output pretty much same thing as a threat to productivity? What explains the convoluted doubletalk?

They interviewed HR people at an HR conference about an IT issue. What the hell?

This group of HR professionals was responding in HR speak. This is what they really meant:

HR_Speak_Answer_ One -- "As an HR practitioner, I want to be supportive of the idea of social networking as a good things for my company and our employees. I want to assume the best about people, and really don't believe they would abuse those tools if we trusted them enough to make them available to them."

HR_Speak_Answer_Number_Two -- "I am not sure what our corporate position on social media and networking tools is yet, so while I want to be supportive and trusting, I also want to toe the corporate line because I am pretty sure a lot of the customers I support would see these kind of tools as a big effin' waste of time with no ROI."

In other words, they were answering without answering. Here is the rest of the information from the article:

1. Twenty-three percent of companies block access to these sites entirely.
2. Eight percent of companies actually encourage employees to use social networking sites.
3. 10% say they are invaluable marketing, networking and sales tools. Banning use of sites could also make it hard to recruit young employees.
4. Most companies aren't formally addressing social networking sites.
5. Fifty-nine percent do not have a formal policy on using the sites during work hours.
6. Nearly half said social networking isn't a problem as long as employees get their work done.

What does your company do about social networking?

Mine pretty much restricts these types of sites, except for those that have a legitimate business reason to use them.

What do IT people say when asked a similar question?

More than two-thirds of IT pros surveyed by Network World last December said they use social networking sites. IT pros were most likely to use the professional networking site LinkedIn, but Facebook and MySpace were popular, too.

IT pros spent more time on the sites for business reasons rather than for play, and numerous organizations have seen business value in these tools.Vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and a number of start-ups have responded with social networking tools for the workplace. Vendor InsideView lets customers integrate social networking tools with business intelligence software.

See also Zappos, Home Depot, The Detroit Red Wings, Whole Foods and many others moving into the medium via twitter or FaceBook sites.