When I worked in crisis communications at the Indiana State Department of Health, I was blocked from a number of sites that I actually needed for my job, and had to get special permission to be able to see. Once, when the State Health Commissioner had made a video that was put on YouTube, everyone in the department was blocked from ever seeing it.
This apparently is not uncommon at all. According to a survey of 1,400 CIOs of companies with 100+ employees, 54% of them completely block employees from using social networking sites at work.
Why? Because, depending on how you look at it, most corporations don’t believe employees should enjoy themselves at work or a lot of employees will abuse that access and waste boatloads of time at work.
I think it’s a combination of both.
According to the survey, which was done by Robert Half Techonology, only 10% of those surveyed let employees use social networks with no restrictions. The remaining 36% have some sort of restriction, like only allowing it to be used for business purposes. The actual results are as follows:
- Prohibited completely – 54%
- Permitted for business purposes only – 19%
- Permitted for limited personal use – 16%
- Permitted for any type of personal use – 10%
I remember a discussion I had with a friend about whether his large corporate employer would start using social media as a company.
“No, because we don’t want the secretaries updating their Facebook pages all day,” was his response.
“But it’s more than that,” I said. “It’s the marketing department trying to reach your customers and end users. It’s promoting your product in the places where the people actually are, not in newspapers and cable TV advertising in every city in America.”
“Yeah, but the secretaries will update their Facebook pages all day,” he said again.
Ah, the old “if we let one person do it, we have to let everyone else do it” excuse. I hate that excuse.
I understand that you’re going to have people who are going to abuse their privileges, but they thought the same thing about giving employees phones, email, and computers years ago. While some people will screw it up for everyone, you can deal with those people.
Social media is becoming more and more prevalent, and regardless of what your company does/sells/produces, your customers are already on there. If you’re a government agency, your citizens are using social media for communication. If you’re a nonprofit, your donors and volunteers oare on social media.
So why aren’t you?
Sure, your secretaries may update their Facebook pages, but deal with that situation when it arises. Don’t screw up a good marketing tool for your sales and marketing people because you have staffers with work-life boundary issues.
Try some of these solutions instead:
- Give your marketing people access to launch any social media marketing or communication. Monitor the results and the time they spend on it. If you see abuse, shut it back down.
- Anyone who handles emergency response should have immediate access to social networking tools and permission to use them as they see fit. Believe it or not, “playing” on Facebook and Twitter is actually useful when it comes to establishing credibility and building up followers and/or journalists. (On the other hand, playing Pirate Clan or Castle Age for hours does not constitute any kind of credibility building. Crisis communicators, don’t screw this one up here!)
- Let your customer service have access to Twitter and show them how to use it. Frank Eliason — @ComcastCares — shook up the customer service and Twitter worlds when he dragged Comcast into the 21st century by creating a Twitter account for the beleaguered cable company. Read Twitter Marketing for Dummies on how to use Twitter for customer service. (Full disclosure/complete bragging: Even though my name is not on the cover, I co-wrote this book. It’s a long story for another blog post.)
- Let several of your trusted employees use social media and use it to answer marketing and customer service issues on the different social networks, forums, etc. People are already talking about you online. Let some of your employees respond, answer questions, handle problems, thank, and maybe even defend your company online.
