Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
Whether you realise it or not, social media activity is happening in your workplace. According to Brett Owens repressive policies are likely to be less effective than a trust-based approach.
Are you worried about the amount of time your staff spend on social media? And should you be? The seamless intrusion of sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn into our lives makes it very difficult to measure the time absorbed in such activities and how they affect productivity and work/life balance.
It can be tempting to dismiss social media as one great big waste of time, but lumping all of it into the same unproductive bucket is unfair and unwise. If applied with purpose and imagination, social media can be an effective tool for business development and client retention as well as employee retention and recruitment.
Social media systems such as Facebook and Twitter often blend personal and business communities, so it’s extremely difficult to lay down black and white rules about their use.
Free reign on social media = Trust
At Chrometa, we take a mostly laissez faire approach to our employees’ use of social media, with no official policies or restriction on what employees are allowed to do. I know this thinking is counterintuitive to what many accounting and consulting firms believe, but I think this boils down to a control issue more than anything else. It’s sort of similar to being told as a child not to get into the cookie jar. If firms set up policies dictating certain actions, employees are more likely to violate these policies if they feel they can get away with it without being noticed.
Each of our employees is encouraged to set up and maintain a presence on “The Big 3” social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Their participation levels, on the other hand, are completely up to them. A couple of our employees really enjoy and benefit, both personally and professionally, from their time on Facebook and Twitter. Ironically, our chief technical officer generally dislikes social media and personally avoids it.
At the core of our free reign is trust. We trust that our employees are devoted to the success of our company, mission, and brand. As a result, I have complete trust they will not represent us poorly; to do so would be like representing themselves poorly. This level of trust is only possible if an employee does completely self-identify with his or her job and firm.
How much time is too much time?
I personally have spent too much time on many occasions on the Big 3 and blogs, as well, without achieving what I’d consider a reasonable ROI on my time. Going forward, I know I need to more accurately gauge the amount of time I should spend on each medium.
It’s not completely fair and accurate when people proclaim, “Twitter is a complete waste of time” because they probably just don’t understand what it can do. Twitter can be a drain, but it also can be useful if used properly and marketed to your stakeholders. Like anything, if you spend too much time on Twitter, you can end up wasting a lot of time if you don’t use it wisely.
How-much-time-too-much-time is something everyone must figure out for themselves. I give our employees the leeway to decide how much time is too much. I know they honestly want to be productive and perform their roles to the best of their ability. Because I know this, I find it’s better if they figure out these types of limits and best practices themselves, instead of having them come as edicts from above.
This article first appeared on our sister site AccountingWEB.com and is part of a series devoted to practice management productivity techniques. Also see:
About the Author
Brett Owens is CEO and cofounder of Chrometa, a Sacramento, CA-based provider of time-tracking software that records activity in real time. Previously marketed to the legal community, Chrometa is branching out to accounting prospects. Gains include the ability to discover previously undocumented billable time, saving time on billing reconciliation, and improving personal productivity. Owens also is blogger and founder at CommodityBullMarket.com and ContraryInvesting.com, as well as a regular contributor to two leading financial media sites, SeekingAlpha.com and BeforeItsNews.com.
Tags:
Replies (6)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
and risk assessment ???
After all it only takes one 'bad apple' etc.....
'.. Each of our employees is encouraged to set up and maintain a presence on “The Big 3” social media channels ..' - isn't this as bad as blocking social media? If a company 'encourages' employees then surely there is an implicit threat that if they don't adhere to company policy then their advancement though the organisation will be hampered?
There is no mention about what happens if this trust is abused or how to deal with the minority who do '.. represent us poorly ..'
If this concept of total trust was taken in a wider context - why do we need laws etc. after all we could all work on trust; or does the author know something that the rest of the universe has missed?
Nothing in life is all 'upside' and greater balance in the article would not have gone amiss
Don't trust staff to honour your trust
We used to have trust based internet policies and found that a certain hardcore element would abuse this trust on social network sites by spending the majority of their work day chatting with friends. We introduced a policy with guidlines restricting use on social network sites to lunch hours, but again this was abused. Eventually we had to install dedicated software where we could set up a period for blocking and allowing specific sites. Still staff found ways to abuse the system and eventually Facebook in particular was blacklisted by the server. The trouble we have now is that so many legitimate sites have links to Facebook that they also get blocked by our moitoring software. Basically we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Facebook is anoying but Blackberry Instant Messenger is worse
All well and good blocking sites like Facebook but people find other ways to waste time at work. We had problems with Blackberry Messenger - I don't have a blackberry, I think they feel cheap and nasty but many of our staff do have them and they spend parts of the day instant messaging their friends. We have had to put in place a policy which states they should only be using this for 5 mintues every couple of hours or when they make themselves a cup of tea. Most staff we trust no problem but we have had some bad eggs who saw it as a right to spend the day talking to friends and then wondered why we woudn't pay them. Facebook we have a small problem with. We encourange all staff to use LinkedIn - fantastic site for business! Not many staff have twitter accounts so not much of an issue
.....................................................
Accountants for Contractors
Social media - it's a matter of trust
When the internet and email first became useful business tools, this was an issue. When mobile phones first became popular and wide-spread, it was an issue. Trust your staff or not? It's up to you. If you can't trust the staff to stick to reasonable policies and feel like they generally want to do their best, why do you want them as employees?
I'd agree with Brett - the majority of people are trustworthy, honest and want to do a good job. But, as others have said, there are a few who aren't to be trusted. Managers/leaders need to find ways to remove the issue / problem - and that might the person, rather than the software/website. Whilst I'm not advocating getting rid of someone who spends a few minutes "playing" on facebook, it IS possible to monitor web usage, mostly automatically, and highlight and deal with repeat offenders. It IS possible to block unwanted downloads and staff may need to get special permission to use sites for particular assignments and projects - all this is about managing the business and the associated risks.
Sue
Is trust compatible with risk assessment ....
@scohen - we are not generally talking about the majority but as always a minority who spolit it for everyone else. So in order to have damage limitation it is the medium that is blocked
getting rid of the untrustworthy personnel - sometimes one is not aware until too late, after the damage has been done! Getting rid of people is simply not an easy task expecially if they are percieved as a threat but have not yet actually done anything wrongit is possible to monitor usage but conditions of employment may need to be revised to accommodate thisyou might be able to block sites but with employees that know what they are doing this could be difficult - see programs such as http://www.securitykiss.com/sk/index.phpyou would probably need to produce usage rules etc. for staff
Everything is possible, it just boils down to how much effort needs to be put in to ensure the risk is managed - and does this justify the cost benefit
And finally to cap it all at the end of the day the staff may not be at fault - especially with a constantly changing FaceBook privacy policy geared to benefit FaceBook rather than the user
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8070513/Facebook-admits-inadvertent-privacy-breach.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/truste-responds-to-facebook-privacy-problems/1544
Social media
JC - indeed. I don't wish to imply it's easy. I am sure there are likely to be benefits to the business of using social media. Like all marketing activity, it takes time to tell, and you may be scuppered by overly restrictive policies, before you've really evaluated the benefit.
You only have to look at the number of people on LinkedIn, which is a business networking site, with personal email addresses because they can't access it from work (and that's not including the ones who are job searching etc) to know that many businesses are taking this very slowly.