An open letter to those organisations who block Social Media sites….

Are you serious?

Seriously, are you serious?

Many of you will cite the reasons for blocking such sites as:

commercial sensitivity
security restrictions

But many of you (you know who you are) will be concerned over their employees wasting time!

Do you really think that if an employees ‘moral compass’ is sufficiently skewed to allow them to waste time at work that your blocking of social media sites will put them back on the ‘straight and narrow’?

I didn’t think you did!

Let’s ne honest, if an employee wants to waste time at work they WILL find a way! Whether it is engaging in personal phone calls (you don’t block phone calls do you?), reading a magazine (you don’t block publications do you?), or gossiping (you don’t block talking do you?) employees WILL find a way to waste time!

But let me ask you to re-examine those communication methods shown in brackets above….

…. you don’t block them because they are excellent learning/communication/networking/collaborative tools – as are Social Media tools!

If an employee abuses them, do you banish the tool from your organisation? Of course you don’t, you expect their Line Manager to engage in Performance Management as you should if an employee abuses the use of Social Media tools.

If I haven’t managed to convince you yet, please read on…

If you think that blocking Social Media sites prevents employees from engaging with them during the working day then you are very much mistaken. In this era of internet enabled mobile devices employees can engage with social media sites regardless of whether you choose to block access to them from your organisations network.

Proof?

OK then, you asked!

I am currently sat on the loo in work typing this blog post. Only, I hasten to add to provide some solitude not for any concurrent reason!

I have still been able to produce a blog post, here it is!

I have still been able to review my Twitter stream.

I have still been able to keep up with the conversation on the Learning and Skills group all from my personal mobile phone.

Has this impacted negatively on my work output? Well actually “Yes” it has! It has taken 4-5 times longer to type this blog post than it would have done on my desktop!

Now who’s wasting whose time?

View the original article here