Employers grappling with social network use
Social networking is on the rise, both on and off the job, leaving companies uncertain how to monitor their use by employees, reports new survey.
More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Typically, companies shy away from restricting an employee's actions off the job. But businesses are concerned about employees who use social networking and reveal private details or post inappropriate pictures that could embarrass the company.
Some organizations, such as the U.S. Marines, have already banned their recruits from using Facebook and Twitter. But the survey found that many businesses aren't sure what to do to restrict or monitor such usage.
Of the companies questioned in the survey, 34 percent said they have a general employee policy that addresses all online activity, including the use of social networking, both on and off the job. Only 10 percent said they have a policy specifically geared toward social networks.
More than half of the individuals said their company has no active system to monitor employees using social-networking sites. Around 32 percent said their company acts only when an issue is discovered.
Of all those surveyed, 24 percent said an employee in their company had been disciplined for inappropriate behavior on a social network, while 37 percent did not know. The percentage was higher in the nonprofit sector, noted the survey, with 33 percent reporting an employee incident versus only 13 percent in the for-profit sector.
"Business clearly hasn't caught up with what its employees are doing online," said Roy Snell, CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. "The risks are twofold. First there remains the business risk of employees doing things online that may reflect badly on the company. The second is that, as business develops policies and procedures in this area, there are going to be a lot of people finding that what they have long done is no longer acceptable at work. During the adjustment period there is likely to be a great deal of friction created."
To conduct the survey in late August, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance compiled responses from 798 people in both profit and nonprofit organizations, as well as government agencies.
Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats--journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He's a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET. 
"More than 50 percent of companies questioned said they have no policy to address the use of social networking by employees outside the workplace"
The military has always been concerned with covert behavior of it's members (like homosexulaity, adultry, drug use, mental health problems, etc) that hold security clearances because of the possibility of revelation of that behavior being used to blackmail them into revealing classified information. However, people who post stuff on social networking sites are really putting it all out there for everyone to see; so it can hardly be used as blackmail material.
Private companies have the right to protect themselves from their own employees. It's wrong for an employee to steal supplies from the company because that impacts the company's bottom line. So too does behavior or speech that places the company in bad light with it's customers; the employee is engaging in a defacto attack on the company. In those cases, adverse personnel action, such as a reprimand, passing over for raises, or termination are justified. However, in many cases, the individual may hold political views that are contrary to those of the company's management. For instance, a catholic hospital who's employees may be in favor of abortion rights. This is a prime instance where the right to anonymity in posting MUST be protected.
Which leads to my conclusion that social networking sites are not the proper places for anyone to post detrimental commentary or examples of questionable behavior. You want to shoot pictures of you at a drunken orgy, fine. But keep the files or prints under your bed and off the internet (at least until you're old enough to write your memoirs!) Otherwise, the Ghosts of Christmas Past will come back to haunt you.
Technology is connecting us in more ways than ever before, and twitter and facebook now allow individuals to do this in real time. I personally feel perception is part of the problem. The convenience of something like twitter is that unlike a real time chat application, you don't have to stay actively engrossed in it. You could literally spend a total of less than 5 minutes spread out across a day tweeting.
Now your employer may happen to walk by for 20 seconds in which you decided to check or update your status, and want to feel you are somehow being unproductive. Yet if you stare at your idle computer for 3 minutes during a large file upload, or during a microsoft update its fine.
I'm not saying that social networking is not a productivity issue, I'm suggesting that it is not as large a problem as people primarily employers would like us to believe. Overall weekly employee evaluations or individual task evaluations can tell you weather it is effecting an employee's performance or not.
Employees that feel comfortable in their work environment work better, this is a fact we all know. If the job is getting done, getting done on time or early, what is the harm in allowing employees to still feel that they are connected and aware of what is going on in the world beyond the office?
If and when it becomes a problem a direct supervisor should council an employee on their time management skills, and suggest that they eliminate distractions.
In addition the increase of people social networking at work, and the number of people whom do not allow it to become a problem, may be one of the clearer indications that the age of the cubicle and 9-5 is behind us and that non-essential staff are more effectively and less costly via a telecommute situation.
Blanket policies for this sort of online use do not work because all people have different paces to their job. As a software developer I can be engrossed in code for multiple days in a row, but there are other times when I literally have nothing to do. Because I've learned to manage my time, I feel that I'm able to take part in these social networking sites and not have it affect my productivity. Some people, however, will use Facebook or Twitter in place of doing their work, but then that becomes a management issue. Having to be able to be a desk all day so that your boss can keep an eye on you is definitely a thing of the past. I can do what I do from my home office and probably be more productive because there will be so many less distractions and my attitude would be so much better...not to mention all the time I would save not being in my car commuting to work.
- Ian
In other situations this is completely unreasonable, and employees should not be held to task for their activities outside of work, provided they don't disclose sensitive or damaging information, unless compelled to by law.
The idea of firing or punishing and individual for what they do in their personal time, and the fact that it is made public (outside of it being an illegal activity) is ridiculous. I think most people give enough from 9-5 without having to be told how to behave when they leave. Now obviously if you are affiliated with the media or the government in anyway this requires a bit of common sense and discretion based on your position, but if you're a standard issue cubicle employee it shouldn't matter.
Yes that is the reasoning behind this kind of policy, the idea that I may reveal the identity of my employer and then say something disparaging about them. However, some of the variations of the policy do not stop at forbidding that - they forbid use of the site full stop.
So some people are not allowed to discuss, for example, their favourite music on Facebook with their friends, which I find ridiculous.
On the flip side, there was recently a girl in the UK who was fired for using facebook on her own time. Unfortunately, she invited all her colleagues as friends and then started to say unpleasant things about her boss in her facebook status. One of those colleagues decided to mention it to the boss, who (perhaps understandably) fired the girl.
Of course, there are and always will be grey areas. Should a Microsoft employee be able to write a blog about Linux in his free time, or write messages on forums saying that he likes Macs? (or could, say, an Audi employee be seen to drive a Mazda). I think so, but the companies in question might disagree.
Clearly there has to be a certain amount of common sense in use.
I would have a HUGE issue if the company stated that employees cannot use social networking at all when not at work. (The sites are blocked at work, so that is not an issue from company computers).
Oh, and don't document your indiscretions! Those embarrassing photos will come back to bite you in the butt later in life.
- by Senrabe September 25, 2009 3:22 PM PDT
- What I do on company time is their business; what I do on my time is my business, as long as it doesn't violate laws.
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