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Adobe Offices via Office Snapshots - this site is great if you want to see what companies are doing to make their offices a cool place to work.
Workplaces are changing big-time. Whether you are in one of the new guard or the old the truth is that the whole set-up of the workplace is not what it used to be. My college education didn't know it was coming, my parents didn't know, and a lot of my bosses didn't see (or want to see) it coming.
This is important.
Workplaces are becoming a group of individuals vs. a company entity.
A group of individuals that have LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts. That can network more effectively in the online space than any other time in history. Individuals that don't want to work in any department specifically but want to be pushed on their strong points despite where the silos are in their office or what their job title is.
This idea is as scary for companies as getting into social media. Social media means that you have to LET GO of your message and let people do what they want with it. What happens after you let go of that is: conversations, connecting, sharing, and ideas. What also comes with that is a loss of power for the company (or the corporate entity in the case of the workplace). The same way that mass media with its one-to-many message is losing it's value is the same way that companies with a strong top down set up will lose their good talent.
Good talent and forward thinkers are looking for jobs in places that are going to allow them to use their skills. These skills, for the top talent these days, are in online networking. If the job in question isn't allowing Facebook because the CEO thinks it's about screwing around then your good talent is going to go somewhere else, I promise. Double that if you happen to have a cube farm and not ping pong tables and flat screens.
So should companies simply open the floodgates and allow online mayhem at work? No. Training should be used to educate employees on the best ways to network, what kinds of things the company is looking for in the online space, and some definite "dont's". Your new talent already has the tools to communicate online. Give them ideas on how you'd like to be represented and go with it. You'd be surprised how much new business you could possibly get from giving your company that many more online touch points.
Will people screw up a little sometimes? Yes. But for the most part it will be the equivalent of a typo and won't cause a huge scandal. The big scandals tend to come from the top down.
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Comments
05.22.09
Good post, Caitlin. Companies that are stuck in their old ways will soon realize that they are losing the war for talent, especially after the recession ends. It's the same thing with social media. If you take a "Wait and see" approach to getting on Facebook or Twitter, by the time your company decides to take the leap the next big thing will hit and your competitors will already be there.
Also great point about people screwing up. Of course, there will be minor mistakes, but thats why you spend time educating and training your employees. We're all adults and with a little training, people will do the right thing.
05.22.09
I highly doubt that anyone at my firm has left because they aren't allowed to go on Facebook. While it may work for web-based companies that are already in that space, for most businesses, it doesn't have the same range as Gen-Y thinks it does. It isn't critical to how the business operates, and for most people it's a way to waste time (as evidenced by the number of quizzes I have to hide from my feed every day). Too many people lean to the side of "over sharing" on social networks, and thus put company information in the public arena where it may not belong. A "minor mistake" could be a large lawsuit or worse. There are a lot of privacy issues that come into play that no social network is prepared to handle, esp. when 3000-4000 different people from the same company are there 'representing' them.
In addition, I for one don't like the idea of my job being directly tied to my Facebook, etc. Frankly, it's part of my social / private life and is none of their business. I am not friends with most of the people I work with, so adding them or having them see the personal side of my life isn't something I am interested in whatsoever.
05.22.09
We had the War on drugs which we're losing. I think there's a War on Obesity that we're losing. Of course, there's the war on terror. Now we have a War for Talent? At least the preposition changed.
That's why I like the bumpersticker that says, I'm already against the next war.
05.23.09
I think Andrew is right, social media is not affecting companies and people tend to share too much information on these sites. However while this is the current reality, it is not the future, and this is where people like Andrew get it wrong. The workplace is decentralizing at a frightening pace, employees at places like Deloitte for example do not even have their own desks anymore not to mention a dedicated landline. Instead, people are expected to be out at client offices, and when they are back in the office to share resources among all employees.
Companies that do not embrace the benefits of social media, and begin to adopt these tools will find themselves behind their competition. An interesting article that you may want to read is called Go Ahead Let Them Use Facebook which was featured in Business Week a few months back. It describes how companies like Unilever are actually finding productivity benefits from using the Web 2.0 tools.
Link to Article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_34/b4097065813253.htm
05.27.09
I know at my company we are not allowed on these various sites not just for productivity concerns. There is also the issue that most companies house entire networks/neighborhoods on their servers. With all the images, videos, etc on social media sites there is a security concern. Just look at the spam hitting Facebook currently. An entire URL-shortening site devoted to phishing and worms. Imagine if that opened up onto an entire server network. It's a pain enough to remove a virus from ONE computer, let alone every one that is associated with the server.
I agree, I loathe that I can't check my Facebook or Twitter during my lunchbreak. I also understand that there's sometimes reasons that companies do things that I don't understand or agree with, but there might be an actual reason for it.
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