Harris Lipman News

To Tweet or not to Tweet – the business question

21/03/2011

By Helen Lawrence, Managing Director of Morgen HR Limited

There is no denying that social media is everywhere these days. It has systematically revolutionised our personal and professional lives, from DMing your BFF “OMG ROFLCOPTER WOT A NIGHT, AGAIN NXT FRI?” to conducting business using Facebook as a shop front. But this duality and prevalence of use brings about issues: I’m sure every one of us has had a sneaky peek at their Facebook in work time. Essentially the issue boils down to two questions: if it can, or is, used as a business tool in your workplace, how far can you actually go in banning its use? And should you?

With regards to the first question, you certainly can. As part of your employee handbook you should consider including (if you don’t already have) an internet, email and social media usage policy. You can block certain sites on your network and monitor people’s web and email access for non work related use and you can password protect your WI-FI. But if you go this far you may generate ill feeling, besides which you still won’t stop people using their smart phones in the lift/toilets/under the desk. It’s a game of cat and mouse where there is unlikely to be any winners.

The alternative, however, may prove a more viable option. Obviously personal use must be sensible but why not allow and encourage the use of social media, steering it towards the productive, turning your employees into advocates and advertising streams? There are many professional social networks that exist today for just that, providing a means to guide this time drain towards being a productive activity. Perhaps encouraging your employees to create a LinkedIn profile or answer relevant professional questions on Quora or even maintain a business Twitter feed.

Of course most businesses choose the middle ground. Restricting the usage of personal social media and blatant non professional use of the internet, while allowing some employees the appropriate leniency and tasking them with maintaining company profiles or professional LinkedIn pages. In the end, the degree of freedom should be made as a business decision, do the benefits of greater saturation of these media provide more or less benefit than the ‘working time’ it takes? And where is the balance point.

There will always be individuals who abuse any system, but there are also stars. Can you afford not to give these people the tools to bring you business?