Another thing that’s happening is that connected employees are becoming ambassadors for their employers. I understand that some employers might find this frightening, but it is also inevitable. Some companies will worry about the message that their employees are spreading across their social networks and the Internet, and complain about their inability to control it; but others would pay good money for employees who are so engaged that they will work at all hours and act as corporate social media ambassadors at all times.

Maybe you’ve heard about this before, and aren’t convinced. Or maybe you think that Generation Y are a bunch of spoiled kids who just have to learn the old way of doing things. Sure it’s not easy to see the effects of this factor yet, but it’s not hard to imagine, and I think dangerous not to consider it. Would you rather deny your skilled and competitive workers the opportunity to use social networks on company time and risk having their dissatisfaction come back to you down the road; or accept that your workers will find a way to use social media during working hours, and consent, thereby appeasing employees and opening up other opportunities?

My opinion is that allowing (and in some cases encouraging) employees to use social media in the course of their work (within limits) will improve their productivity and morale and create a stronger attachment between employee and employer, making them more likely to stick around and to offer employers their best in terms of labour and ideas.

Writing on Slaw.ca, Steven Matthews points out that the potential for abusing social media at work is clear and present, which could obviously lead to reduced productivity, but the reality of the situation is that if employers give their employees productivity targets, and the employees achieve those targets, there’s not much of a problem. And if employees don’t meet expectations, well, employers all have their own methods for dealing with such workers.

Social media expand definitions of both the workday and work itself, and (okay, one more prediction) it will become increasingly difficult to fit employees’ work into the traditional 9–5, Monday to Friday, structure. For many people, the line between work and leisure will blur, and hopefully that won’t be a bad thing. Social media and its new forms of communication will keep us connected to work, but they can also allow us to arrange our lives in such a way that work and leisure don’t conflict. In this model, the employer that allows its employees the most freedom (while maintaining strict targets for production) could very well end up with the happiest and the most productive workforce, and they will be sure to spread the word.

That sounds a bit weird, but I think it’s probable. What do you think?

And here’s one other thing that employers might not have considered yet: the expanded definitions of workday and work don’t quite fit with existing employment standards law, particularly with respect to hours of work and overtime. You’ve probably heard about the court cases in Canada and the United States in which employees are suing their employers for overtime because the employees find themselves logging extra hours on their Blackberrys away from work. Should employers be calling on their legislatures to address these changes, or should they wait it out to see if things settle down?

Bonus: here’s one take from David Armano at Harvard Business Publishing on where social media will head next year.

Adam Gorley
First Reference Human Resources and Compliance Assistant Editor

© 2009 First Reference Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Permalink | One comment |

Social media are new, and their value is not entirely clear, especially to businesses that are doing just fine as they are, thank you very much. Heck, it’s even possible that blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Web 2.0 and social networking services will turn out to be passing fads, in which case, maybe companies that ignore them will have the last laugh on the matter. I don’t know about that, but I will say this: the generation that grew up on the Internet and began to enter the labour market over the last decade is unlikely to want to shift to a way of doing things that doesn’t involve the Internet and its associated applications and gadgets. And their children—well, who can say how connected they’ll be. It would take an extremely authoritarian approach to return to the workplace of our parents, and likely an approach that looks backward rather than ahead. But enough of prediction, let’s talk about some interesting stuff!

One interesting thing that’s happening—and that employers (and even employees) almost certainly haven’t widely considered—is that employees who use social media are self-training, whether they’re at work or not. No one can say whether services like Twitter and Facebook are fads and if they have lasting power, but I think it’s fair to say that these services, along with email, blogs and, of course, the Internet in general have changed interpersonal and corporate communication in such a way that there’s no going back to landlines, facsimiles and standard postal service.

In other words, eventually—if not already—employers will want employees who understand how the social web and its new forms of communication work; and by allowing their employees to use social media during work hours, that is precisely what employers will get, whether workers use the things for personal or professional use. Think about that for a minute: employees engaged in learning valuable and marketable skills while doing their work—and doing it with pleasure.

What does this have to do with time management?

Well, it seems to me that today’s workplace is often about getting more done in less time with fewer resources, all while offering employees a challenging and engaging environment so they don’t jump ship to a competitor. Naturally, employees learn while performing their daily tasks, but when they can be happy about learning, without even realizing that’s what they’re doing, and they can advance their own and their employer’s goals at once, it’s like expanding time and stuffing more work into it—with the employee’s blessing.

Maybe instead of fretting over employees wasting time on social networks, employers could create teams to work on projects that would look for ways to incorporate social media into the business in order to improve time management and productivity. This sort of initiative—if managed properly—is sure to engage employees and encourage them to focus on their work, while offering potentially significant returns for employers.

Is it possible that time management could be fun?

Adam Gorley
First Reference Human Resources and Compliance Assistant Editor

I’ve got a couple more things to say about this, so look out for part three in the next few days.

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To a casual observer, it might appear that time management has fallen to the wayside at many workplaces today: employees work well beyond their scheduled hours, including while on lunch breaks, during leisure time and social events and even on vacation. And online social networking has entered the scene either to distract employees and drive down productivity or to empower employees and connect them to more and better professional and personal opportunities, depending on whom you ask. But with proper scheduling, time management should prevent work from expanding beyond regular work hours—as was the case before the Internet age. Instead, in the “knowledge economy”, where the smart phone rules, scheduled work hours have become nearly meaningless.

(Obviously, this applies only to workplaces where employees have the flexibility to perform work outside of the confines of office and hours.)

Here are two non-rhetorical questions: Is this a fatal failure of time management at work? Or have we simply entered a new era of labour in which time management has expanded to include leisure time?

In either case, social media have confused the issue, and employers might be using the social web as a scapegoat to cover up their or their employees’ time management failings.

Institutional vs. personal time management

If it’s a simple failure of workplace time management, then scheduling employees’ work appropriately and also providing employees with appropriate work should discourage workers from spending their time on personal distractions. The presence of social media in the workplace should not get in the way of a good employee’s duties, but poor time management could easily drag down even the most productive worker. Anyone who uses a smart phone for work implicitly understands and acknowledges that this model is on the way out.

If we’ve adopted a new mode of work—one that extends beyond 9–5—then employers will have to start judging employees’ work by the goals they achieve rather than the hours that they work. This is the foundation of the flexible work model, and almost anyone under the age of 30 believes that it’s the way of the future (and the now). Especially in cases where employers ask or require that employees make themselves available via email or phone outside of regular work hours—in other words, infringing on the employees’ personal time—it seems unfair to prevent those workers from using a bit of their regular workday to access social media, either for personal or professional uses.

I think it’s pretty clear that we’re in transition, and eventually, we’ll end up somewhere between these ideals of institutional time management and personal time management. In the meantime, employers have to ask themselves what their priorities are and how they themselves have contributed to this situation.

Look out for my follow-up post in the next few days for some insights into what social media mean for workflow.

Adam Gorley
First Reference Human Resources and Compliance Assistant Editor

© 2009 First Reference Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Permalink | One comment |

Image taken from: http://goingconcern.com

Some companies have applied traditional methods to the problem of social media at work: the soft approach attempts to monitor and regulate via policies; and the hard approach simply slams the door on employee access and use with a heavy hand. Neither of these works particularly well. The former will almost certainly lead to employee confusion and efforts—either intentional or not—to circumvent the policy, and the latter will likely result in discontented employees finding other ways to work around the blockade. In addition, both are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce fully (these days, employees can easily access the Internet from their phones); and attempts to bypass or evade controls could even lead to damage of physical or virtual IT resources (an employee who tries to get around or disable a firewall could inadvertently open the company’s servers to outside attack or leak confidential information).

It should be clear that a policy is necessary to address employee conduct with respect to social media and corporate communications. Employers need to have clear official statements in place that outline employees’ responsibilities around confidential information and general conduct. However, while policies will help you protect your assets and image by discouraging undesirable employee behaviour and strengthening your case should you end up in court, they can’t stop wilful or careless employees from letting slip some damaging tidbit of information—or simply abusing social media at work, however you define “abuse”.

If keeping track of all employee Internet activity is beyond the physical and technical means of most employers—especially small and medium-sized companies—then what to do?

For control, employers will have to look at something that can examine all of the Internet and intranet traffic among your employees, allowing some things and blocking others. A review of any such system is beyond the scope of this post, but you can find a limited list of content-filtering applications and hardware on Wikipedia.

These systems offer various levels of control and security over internal and external communications. For example, you might want to control and record how long employees use a certain site and which software they can use and download; you might want to warn employees when they try to use certain words (such as the company name) in social media communications; you might want to record all instant messaging communications for compliance; and you might want to limit uploads and downloads or censor images. A good content control system will allow you to do these things and much more—and easily make changes when necessary.

This sort of control can be used to balance the soft and hard approaches to regulate the use of social media at work, but it’s important to remember that many of today’s (and probably most of tomorrow’s) employees will wince at even the least limit to their social media interaction.

The big thing is—and this is where the conversation usually gets stuck—for the moment, employees want to use social media, and they will likely do so, regardless of what employers tell them. You’re better off compromising than fighting with them, especially when the benefits of implementing a quality social media strategy should far outweigh the costs.

There is another semi-solution that employers should consider seriously—and not just in the realm of social media: setting the example from the top-down. Managers/supervisors must act as role models for staff, because they are the most direct example of appropriate company behaviour for employees. If workers find their supervisors scanning Facebook or tweeting throughout the day, they are more likely to think that the company accepts those activities as business as usual. If employees receive a strong and consistent message and example from higher-ups that the workplace is for work, they will have less justification for using social media for personal reasons. No regime of control can replace a culture of strong employee relations.

Employees might argue that their social media personae are simply extensions of their selves and there’s no real line between “work use” and “personal use” any more. Maybe this is true. Surely, occupations that rely on networking could say this, and maybe highly collaborative researchers. It seems clear that the workplace is changing and the nature of work along with it, but the question is: what place do social media have in that changing workplace and work?

Adam Gorley
First Reference Human Resources and Compliance Editor

© 2009 First Reference Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Permalink | 3 comments |

Social Media in the Workplace

If you’re reading this blog post, I’ll bet that you’re at work, on company time. Should you feel bad about that? I’d like to believe that what you’re reading has value, and will add to your understanding of today’s workplace and HR practices, and maybe that’s justification enough. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, besides reading blogs, you also looked at your Facebook account and maybe even sent a few tweets while at work. What’s your justification for those non-work activities?

A growing number of employees across Canada and around the world—particularly among the younger generations—feel there’s no need to justify using social media at work—it’s just an integral part of life today; but there are very good reasons, and employers would do well to consider them. These reasons include increased and better networking opportunities and business leads; cheap or free marketing and public relations; enhanced internal communications, collaboration and camaraderie; and employee goodwill toward employers. Moreover, companies who adopt social media techniques can appear forward-thinking, possibly even attaining the coveted and evanescent status of “cool”.

It all just sounds so good and easy, doesn’t it? And chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve heard it all before, too.

But while using social media in a corporate setting might be as good as it sounds, it’s certainly not so easy. A number of things stand in the way of social media implementation in workplaces, the main obstacle being a conservative culture that looks with trepidation on major changes and fears losing control of its communications. Don’t get me wrong: these are valid concerns, and I try not to blame companies for trying to protect themselves as best they can from things that appear beyond their control, especially things that look to some eyes like trends or passing fads. I might, however, criticize a company that refuses even to listen to the changes taking place around them, especially if it’s their own employees who are doing the talking.

So how do you control your corporate communications in the Facebook era? (That’s an actual question to which I’d like to hear your answers, and a rhetorical question that I’ll look at in my follow-up post.)

Adam Gorley
First Reference Human Resources and Compliance Assistant Editor

© 2009 First Reference Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments |