29 Dec 09 Why you should not ban social media at work

People who do surf the internet for fun at work — within a reasonable limit of less than 20 percent of their total time in the office — are more productive by about 9 percent than those who don’t.

Dr. Brent Coker, Department of Management and Marketing at The University of Melbourne.

So then, why do only 11% of companies allow unrestricted access to Facebook in the work place?

Social media is the latest on a long line of communication mediums that have achieved mainstream adoption and therefore requires an intuitive understanding in order to be able to use it properly.

How can a company learn what to do in Social Media if their employees aren’t allowed to use it? The standard corporate approach is to outsource to an agency and expense any marketing campaigns, rather than invest in developing internal expertise.

As a new tool, SM has a learning curve, just like phones, email and the internet did when they first became easily accessible. Would you block access to the internet because you’re afraid people might check personal email or not provide phones because someone might make a personal phone call?

Similarly, blocking access to Social Media shows a clear lack of progression – an ‘old-school’ and overly-beauracratic mind-set that will not appeal to future employees.  So don’t dictate, but educate. If you feel your employees need to be treated like kids, then you probably need new employees.

A basic marketing tenet: If you restrict access to something, then it’s human nature to want it even more.