How to deal with social networks at the office

Posted by BeepStar in The Whole Dot Com Thing on 01 27th, 2009 | one response

Given the abundance of social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut and Ning, a growing crowd of companies have adopted “reasonable internet use” policies.

Such policies generally award personal time to surf the web, along with the strickly professional tasks. This clears the air about the occasional use of information systems use for stuff which is important to the employee while not being directly linked to his work directives, per se.

Within this mix of “personal vs business” use of the internet, at the office, lies the social networking grey zone, of sorts.

While networking with mostly personal contacts may not directly ring in new sales or realize specific business objectives, it remains, nonetheless, another path towards business growth, if used strategically. This aspect should never be underplayed by managers as it’s a reflection of a rising trend to look online for counsel, help and information on just about all matters.

For instance, if a machining shop’s employees are offered financial incentives to help find qualified new employees for the company, the recruitment process’ cost can be slashed from thousands to mere hundreds of dollars, not to mention the much shorter delays before qualified profiles arrive on the HR manager’s desk.

Another example. Company image. Having employees provide free help (within reasonable limits) to a highly visible cause (or Facebook group) will likely establish the brand in a new light for those who find it there. Think of all those Facebook groups with millions of active members where a company employee could provide a much needed “answer” accompanied with a free consultation offer for all those who require it — the outcome can be downright spectacular… and wildly lucrative.

Yet another scenario would be one where an employee finds a stream of information of low values to just about everybody else but inversely, of very high value to him because it helps within his line of work. For example, if a company sells winter shelters, it would be awesome to have live temperature feeds alongside historical temperatures for the markets they serve. That way, the sales periods (and marketing campaigns) can be precisely aligned with “on the ground” needs, as they arise (or are about to).

We could go on for quite a while regarding the many ways in which social networking activities can provide added value to just about any company but as in anything, employees need to find a viable balance between their tasks, while making sure they keep up with their work responsibilities.

From the bosses’ perspective, if someone is doing what’s expected and doing it reasonably well, there’s no basis for further investigation or complaint.

Pointing out the obvious, making sure people aren’t engaging in gross negligence or addictive, risky and unethical behavior in using social networks —or any other popular web site or service— is probably the bosses’ most important task because that’s where “the problems” are likely to arise from.

Terrorizing all employees with some drastic (lawyer formulated) net use policy is supremely counter-productive and might end up costing the company dearly in lower employee morale, abysmal productivity and a sense of general resentment against such a radical cutoff with the way business is carried about, elsewhere.

As social networks grow up to become all sorts of things to all sorts of people, including business-minded people, companies where acceptance, within a “reasonable use” comfort zone, trumps over internet monitoring paranoia (by the bosses) are likely to reap substantial benefits from their progressive stance on the web’s latest and greatest offerings.

Tags: social networks, social networking, working, at the office, networking with people, meeting, e-meeting, meeting up with new people, business leads, business contacts, companies, internet monitoring, business opportunities, reasonable internet use, lawyers, policies, net usage policy, popular web sites