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Not a day goes by where I don’t see some mention of how companies are blocking access to sites like twitter and facebook. THE HORROR! Social media evangelists will cry out how this is backwards thinking, how these sites are crucial for career management, that it’s a lack of trust, or just downright unfair. But they’re wrong. It’s the fault of both the employees and management themselves. Not some damn website.
In addition to the various web development / Wordpress ninja freelance work I do, I’ve also developed somewhat of a niche of doing IT consulting for attorneys. And lately, it’s been the same story. Employees are spending too much time on-line, can I block their access? The answer is yes, and I’m happy to do it. Because it’s not a matter of these companies standing in the way of employee development. They’re attempting to fix a problem. The employees aren’t working. Think about it: if the work was getting done, there’d be no issue. But there’s a breakdown somewhere.
Here’s the dirty secret: the same employees who are on facebook and twitter all day are the ones who used to be on other sites all day, and before that were emailing people all day, and before that chatting on the phone. You see, the employee hasn’t changed at all, just the methods and technologies they use. And for every 1 employee who is using these tools in a productive manner, there are 100 who are filling out useless surveys about their survival chances in a zombie attack or playing Scrabble.
Here’s the other dirty secret: managers are ill-equipped to deal with this. It used to be that they’d just fire the person. But now that’s not all that easy. And many of them now manage people who act the same way they did when they were regular employees. So how do you discipline someone? I certainly don’t have the answer for that. There’s a reason I don’t manage more than 1 person other than myself.
The bottom line? It’s not a technology problem. It’s a human resources problem.
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Comments
10.13.09
Very well said.
Engaging read.
Thank you,
B
10.13.09
Totally agree with you!
10.14.09
I would say this nails it on the head. And by blocking online networks, those people go back to other sites, emailing, and chatting.
10.14.09
Agree - it's never been a "technology" problem; it's been and it a problem with people dealing with technology and its affects on other people. I do remember the days before the Internet, texting, and all that other social media; and you had people sneaking away yakking on cell-phones (Pay phones before that) but you get the point. Only technology has changed to make it easier to screw off..........lol
10.14.09
The real issue is that employers will never be able to stop employees from wasting time by trying to remove the time wasters. The problem is that most managers have no idea how to manage. If an employee has time to waste on the internet, they need more work. If they're not getting their work done because they're on the internet, doing crosswords, etc. deal with the real problem - not getting work done. If you actually manage performance, you focus on the real issue. If your top performer wants to check in on facebook occasionally, who cares? Manage your employees' performance, not their actions.
10.15.09
Brian, that's easy enough said, but in today's age, it is about punishing the masses because for whatever reason, we cannot single out individual actions and punish the people behind them. I learned this early/often while in the military: one person screws up = everyone pays the price, and it is no different in any non military job I've been in, in fact, I think the non military world has picked up the bad habits from the military in that regard. The problem with the punish all theory is that the person doing the "bad thing" is never punished, so in their mind, they didn't do anything wrong, and will continue their actions, to the detriment of the group they are involved with....... they will just try harder to not get caught.
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