Should you let your staff spend time at work on social networking? Some recent research suggests that if you don't, your staff may be less committed and effective.
The research was presented at London Business School's Management 2.0 conference last week. Bruce Rayner, of employment benefits company You at Work, found that those staff who spent up to an hour a day on non-work emailing, texting and social messaging were far more committed than those who spent no time on those activities.
Big Issue for Generation Y
And its an especially big issue for Under 25s, the group known as Generation Y. The survey found that 33% of this age group were frustrated by employer restrictions over the web (compared to just 9% across all age groups). Over three quarters of under 25s said they were "less likely to leave a company that encourages me to socially interact with colleagues”.
Bruce divided companies into 3 categories: the 'ban-its', the 'agnostics' and the 'embracers', those companies who actively encourage staff to use social networking. He argues: "If employees take a 'social networking' slice out of their day it doesn’t mean the 'value adding' work slice decreases - it means the overall pie increases. Trust is repaid through higher creativity and productivity"
So is your company in the "ban-it" category or are you ready to join the forward-thinking embracers like Cisco, IBM and Microsoft?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment