March 30th, 2007

Social media addiction in the workplace

Posted by Dan Farber @ 7:35 am

Categories: General, IT Management, Web Technology

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GigaOm's Web Worker Daily references a survey from Clearswift, a security company, indicating that the consumer, Web 2.0 Internet has a big presence in the workplace. According to the survey:

• 87 percent of office workers access Web 2.0 sites each week, with 63 percent accessing the sites one or more times a day
• 51 percent of office workers spend one or more hours a week using and accessing Web 2.0 sites when at work
• 46 percent of office workers have discussed work-related issues on social media websites
• 71 percent of office workers use Web-based email at work for personal reasons
• 50 percent of office workers believe that employees should be entitled to access Web 2.0 Internet content from their work computer for personal reasons 

I have heard this from CIOs, telling me that their logs show a significant number of employees hanging out at MySpace, IMing with friends or watching YouTube videos, and they are not sure what do about it. Blocking social media sites could have a much worse effect on employee moral than simply allowing the behavior, within reason, whatever that level may be. Happy employees do better work, and the Web has become the new water cooler and break time activity–that provides an important outlet for employees. Managers need to be aware that if employees are having performance-related problems it could be due to an excess of social media activity or even an addiction. I'm sure there will be clinics to help cure people from excessive Twittering.

Web Worker Daily offers some advice to employees, such as setting aside blocks of time for the more distracting social activities in the day, instead of letting them intrude constantly. "Do you really need to be in constant touch with your e-mail, RSS feeds, photostreams, and Twitter messages?," the author asks.