Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

Social Media and the Corporate Impact Part II

Is social media killing your company’s productivity? Stop and think about what you don’t know before you give an immediate answer to what you do know. How many of the people in your organization have unlimited access to a computer or smart phone each day? Has your organization set-up up the internet to block out access to any and all social networking sites (there are dozens)? Can people tuck away in a corner and update their Facebook page or send a tweet?

Now answer the question. A common response I have received is of course “it depends.” If your staff or certain people on your staff are in positions where they need to be highly visible and connecting with new people each day then great, it’s good to have them utilizing the latest technology in order to do so. Providing they are not wasting time with personal updates and connections. If however, your staff or members of your company don’t need to be on-line connecting with others throughout the work day then yes, they may just be killing productivity with social networking.

I recently had to coach a friend and colleague through a job loss not because of economic issues, a layoff or even performance. No, he was let go from being on his personal internet pages too much during the day. This is someone who I know is a top performer in the recruiting field, but as such has some idle time and the resources in front of him to check his MySpace and send out a status update once a day which eventually turned into multiple times per day.

Why is social networking at work such an issue? Mainly as a result of lack of direction and policy by corporations and management. People in general like to communicate with friends, family, peers and yes strangers. Social networking has become the new water cooler for the work place and without guidelines by which people should work by, then how long of a water break do they need?

In short, does you company have a policy by which to operate from or at least guidelines in place to help managers with navigating this new but very sticky issue? If not, then it might be time to start the research on your own to ensure the right people are helping to brand and drive revenues with work-place social networking and you don’t have an entire staff on the web having fun or even venting some steam to others on-line.

Chris

^{To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.}

Chris Wellington “The Recruiting Guy”, President, The Wellington Group

Social Media and the Corporate Impact Part I 

To put this blog piece in context, Social Media for this blog is any third party on-line or internet based networking or people-connecting tool. Examples of such are Facebook, Eacademy, Plaxo, Myspace, U-tube and Twitter. What I am not referencing are internal corporate “wanna be” social networking tools, associations (most of which have gone “on-line” now to save on cost), static websites, email, instant messaging or even the ever prevalent texting.

Why did I highlight the difference? In the next couple of blogs I will be talking about the trends I have seen and researched and the data which exists about social media or social networking and its impact to the corporate environment. Those non-social media types are many times already present in the workplace as companies provide employees with limitless emailing, cell phones (or the policy that it’s ok to have it with you and work) and texting, instant messaging solutions, web-based company portals, on-line meeting programs, and on and on.

The goal of my blogging about this topic is not to create hype or fear about allowing such uses in the work place, but rather highlight the fact that the World of Work has changed. In just a few short years we have gone from telecom and land-lines ruling the communication method and business sectors to flat screen monitors with built in web-cams on employee desks and Blackberry’s in the hand of all those around the conference table.

I hope you enjoy these pieces and please do leave your thoughts and feedback on this topic as you never know who on the web might just like what you have to say!

Chris

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.