Facebook: The newest site for companies to block
Neville Hobson writes that more than two-thirds of UK companies are blocking employee access to Facebook and similar sites based on the fear that employees will waste time rather than get their work done. (This according to according to a study reported in the Daily Telegraph.
I wish I could say I was surprised by this, but I was expecting it. The report does, however, afford me the opportunity to list the problems I have with blocking employee access to anything on the web, an exercise I haven’t undertaken here in some time. Here goes:
- The productivity myth—Are employees really wasting time? Has anybody in the organization actually measured? Or is work getting done, is it getting done on time, and is it quality work? Most employees will not risk their jobs to screw around online. If they spend an hour online for non-work-related purposes, they’ll put in an extra hour to get the job done. That hour may be spent doing work at home, but on the other hand, employees are routinely expected to take work home with them. That’s the nature of work-life integration: If you expect me to do work at home, then I expect the employer to tolerate me engaging in non-work activities at work. The measure of productivity is the amount of output created.
- The statistics prove it’s a productivity issue—Statistics from companies that sell blocking software is suspect, and that’s a charitable characterization. The number of hours an average employee spends surfing (based on more questionable research) is multiplied by the number of employees, and the result is multiplied by an average hourly pay rate to come up with a terrifying “lost productivity” figure. You have to wonder how all that lost productivity can be reconciled against Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis showing producitivity continues to grow. These “studies” don’t account for the extra time an employee puts in to compensate for the time spent online, or the regular workload he takes home with him. They’re just designed to frighten executives into buying their products.
- There is no business value in Facebook or similar social networks—That’s what they said about the web. Remember when nobody could have web access without special dispensation from a member of the executive team, in writing? Then it was message boards. Then instant messaging. It took me less than 30 seconds to find Facebook groups on accounting, engineering, human resources and geology (I once worked for an oil company where good geologists were in high demand).
- We have to—it’s a legal issue—Company lawyers objected to email when it was new, fearing that email made it too easy to inadvertently (or intentionally) leak proprietary information. Imagine work without email today. There is a tendency among lawyers to fear new technologies. They had the same worries about fax machines, photocopiers, and even the telephone. Instant Messaging raised legal concerns, but today more than half of U.S. workers use IM for work-related purposes.
- Blocking access is the way to deal with abuse—Companies seeking to build an engaged workforce turn around an send a message to all employees that says, “We don’t trust any of you as far as we can throw you.” Since engagement requires trust, this is an engagement-killing move. It also can affect business. At one company, instant messaging was shut down when federal requirements for IM record-keeping went into effect; the move was made with no research to determine how important IM had become to the conduct of day-to-day business in this company. At some companies (IBM and Raytheon come to mind), switching off IM would cripple the business. At another company, implementing web filtering software suddenly denied access to websites that hundreds of employees used to do their work. Sites needed to obtain data could not be made available for weeks, due to a convuluted IT process, even though employees needed them immediately. At one healthcare company, all blogs are blocked based on the belief that blogs contain no valuable content, despite the presence of thousands of healthcare-related blogs, including influential ones like Eye on FDA, for example, that could provide a lot of employees with valuable intelligence.
The solution is simple: Establish and communicate policies governing what employees can and cannot do online. The policies should recognize that business value can accrue from these activities and that some personal activities are acceptable, assuming it’s not interfering with the ability to get work done. Supervisors should be trained to identify abuse so that policies are enforced by exception.
A CEO once proudly told me he had invested half a million dollars in hardware and software to block employees from visiting pornographic websites. When I wondered if that money might have better been invested in customer service, he bristled: “It is inappropriate for employees to view pornography in the workplace.”
“Of course it’s not,” I said. “So you have people stationed at every company entrance checking purses and briefcases for printed porn?”
“Don’t be stupid,” he told me. “That’s a supervisor’s job.”
I have never been able to understand why that changes when the delivery channel happens to be technology-based. It’s simple: Supervisor detects declining performance in an employee on her staff. She sees he’s spending a lot of time behind closed doors. She asks IT to check his logs and finds he’s spending six hours a day on social networks (or porn sites or gambling sites or shopping sites or whatever). She disciplines the employee. Word spreads that an employee was discliplined (or even fired) for violating the policy, an important reinforcement since culture is driven by reward and recognition.
As for Facebook and other social networks, I have no doubt that 12-24 months from now, companies will have figured out how these resources apply to business, the restrictions will have been lifted, and policies enacted. At the same time, new restrictions will be introduced to block whatever comes next.
07/29/07 | 21 Comments | Facebook: The newest site for companies to block