Controlling Social Media in the Office

Social networking turns cubicles with single employees into virtual gatherings of hundreds or more. It’s time you got a handle on this serious productivity and security issue. 

Cisco’s 2010 Midyear Security Report says “45 percent of employed millennials [Generation Y] use social networking sites when they’re at work, but only 32 percent say that this use of social networks is supported by their IT departments.” For sure, some social media usage is for legitimate purposes: building a support community for buyers, marketing new offerings, and so on.

But Cisco’s data shows that among employees checking Facebook, 7 percent are playing the game FarmVille, averaging 68 minutes of diversion each day. For a $30/hour worker that represents roughly $12,000 in lost annual productivity.

Not too long ago, Fast Company blogger Adrian Ott wrote that employees surveyed by People-OnTheGo spend half of their work day managing various inboxes, including social media.Yet only 6.8 percent of respondents use social media strictly for work purposes.

There is also a security risk with social networks. Fake links designed to put users on spam lists are fairly benign threats. Links leading to a bogus “Facebook Update Tool” and the like, but which really serve to infect the user’s system with a password-stealing Trojan, are graver.

Such factors often push companies to simply ban social media altogether. But in an increasing number of cases, this simply isn’t an option. Some would-be hires now balk at taking a position with a company that would cut them off from their several hundred friends.

Additionally, according to William Denny, a partner at legal firm Potter Anderson & Corroon, how important social media is to a company will depend on the nature of its clientele. More consumer-facing businesses are compelled to make peace with social networking. Enterprises with little-to-no consumer focus, however, are more likely to guard confidentiality by banning social networking than risk the added privacy leaks inherent in social apps.