Laurel Papworth (@silkcharm), an Australian social media expert; brings us the following interesting statistics on access to Social Networking websites in the workplace.
“Despite Australia’s laid back reputation, its workers are among the world’s most deprived of access to social networking sites according to 3 mobile’s INQ poll. in terrible traffic this morning
In the Australian survey, 55% of staff said their employers banned social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace in the workplace, compared to 20% of workers in the UK, 12% in France, 11% in Spain, 10% in Germany and 6% in Italy.
Australian workers have therefore had to resort to subterfuge to continue networking on-the-job, such as:
• Almost 1 in 3 (28%) hide their screen from their boss so they can social network undetected
• 27% transfer personal messages into a work email to surreptitiously read social network posts
• 17% skip lunch breaks to justify time spent on social networks during the working day”
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow that is so sad,
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009/02/digital-trends-to-watch-for-2009.html
Given those stats – Its amazing to think there is a workforce out there that is deprived of tools such as Twitter, FB etc.
From an IT Support perspective, I can see where these bosses are coming from.
There is a growing number of links within many of the “applications” available in social networking which try and inject Spyware and Malware into the users machine. At a corporate level this Spyware can have dramatic effects on the whole network.
I am more in favour of users being trained in spotting signs of spyware, rather than trying to lock everyone down.
Prohibition of any sort will only cause an underground movement, which is far harder to guard against.
Thanks for the comment Jay
I don’t actually use many Facebook applications – I use a few for my company’s fan page, but I can imagine there’d be some dodgy apps that you definitely wouldn’t want accessed in the workplace.
I agree in training people to spot spyware. Not many organisations run solid anti-virus / anti-spyware applications which should be compulsory for all businesses.
And agreed again. Traditional law/policy making just doesn’t work with Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a consumer movement that governments won’t (and shouldn’t) be able to get in the way of.