Don’t Ban Facebook!
25 Oct
A research study found that firms that let their employees access Facebook at work lose an average of 1.5% in total employee productivity. Nearly half of the employees studied used Facebook during work hours (shocking!) — some as much as 2 hours per day at work. The researchers concluded that:
Firms should evaluate their Facebook policy and the cost to the organization in allowing access to Facebook, as today blocking Facebook may actually result in a 1.5% gain in productivity.”
My take: Hogwash.
If you have a productivity problem at your company (and you do), then you’d be wise to look elsewhere to increase productivity before banning Facebook.
Here’s how to improve productivity without banning access to Facebook:
1) Ban lunch. I bet that some of your co-workers take an hour to eat their lunch. What’s up with that? How long does it take to eat a sandwich? If eliminating lunch outright isn’t a feasible option at your firm, here’s an alternative: Have that whiny Gen Yer you just hired out of school — who’s probably the worst offender of accessing Facebook at work — get lunch for everyone else so they can sit at their desks and eat their lunch while working.
2) Ban meetings. How much time do you spend in meetings? Probably four to six hours a day. And what do you predominantly do in those meetings? Chit-chat with your colleagues. What a freaking waste of time and cause of lost productivity. I’d actually recommend not letting people at work talk to each other at all. Collaboration is really just code for chit-chat.
3) Leak rumors of a possible layoff. You will never see your co-workers work more diligently.
These are just a few of the ideas I have to help you improve productivity without having to resort to banning Facebook. The others you’ll have to hire me and pay for.
But seriously, Facebook isn’t the cause of productivity problems, it’s a symptom. If you ban Facebook, do you think the people who have been spending two hours a day at work on the site are going to say “damn, they banned Facebook — I guess I’ll get back to work now”?
I’ve got no research to support this, but my bet is that an employee that spends excessive time on Facebook is an employee who:
- Isn’t happy in his/her job, or
- Isn’t challenged enough in his/her job, or
- Doesn’t have an appropriate workload, or
- Isn’t sufficiently interacting with his/her boss and colleagues.
It’s also possible that some of the folks who spend a lot of time on FB at work are actually the high-performers at their firms. Sadly, the researchers cited above addressed none of these potential causes of excessive FB usage as the culprit to be addressed.
Nicely put. These are the same people who likely also use the company phone, or their cell phone, or email, or IM to waste time. The issue with these employees is disengagement or laziness. Facebook is one more tool for them to use to waste time, but it will lead to a spiral of banned tools and no higher engagement or focused workforce. Deal with the root cause behind slackers at work not take the chicken IT solution of banning the tools for everyone.
Spot on. On the other hand, my productivity skyrocketed when my company blocked access to the Live Music Archive. (jk, boss).
Just yank the ethernet cable. that really should do the trick.
Firms should spend more time constructing effective performance metrics than they do worrying about lost productivity to social networking sites. By setting clear, and lofty, performance expectations, you allow employees to discipline themselves.
Here’s another “should do”– address the issue directly with the time wasters instead of applying a blanket policy that unnecessarily punishes everyone for the actions of a random few. Bandwidth became an issue for us as we’re getting more reliant on ASPs for work-related tasks. Many of these folks had no idea leaving their Gmail and favorite websites open all day in the background reduced our overall bandwidth. So companies shouldn’t assume the worst right off the bat. Educate, give folks a chance to clean up their act and then go get ‘em.
And I applaud item #2.
I think the most important issue here is trust. Once you start banning anything, you’re beginning to treat your employees like untrustworthy worker drones. They’ll respond accordingly, and the atmosphere at the office will probably alter significantly.
For what it’s worth, I have all but “banned” Facebook for myself. The signal-to-noise ratio is very poor, and there’s a lot more interesting material on the web than which distant acquaintance’s cat happens to be sick. Seems only a step above WoW in terms of pointless addictions.
@mrsmcj: Couldn’t agree more. Bandwidth issues is one thing. Firms banning Facebook in the name of “recovering lost productivity” is another though. My company blocks access to a few music sites. I can understand and (reluctantly) accept that. But banning a FB would be a questionable mover.
Chris: You make a great point about the trust factor. My bet is that firms that ban FB DON’T EVEN REALIZE that they’re sending a signal of mistrust. In fact, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of analysis going on in the decision to ban FB. I think the process is “our employees have no legitimate reason to use FB at work, so let’s block it. Done deal.”
I bet we could find a company that blocks its employees from accessing FB at work…and yet does a fair degree of advertising on the site. Now if every other firm blocked access, wouldn’t that diminish the potential marketing success for firms advertising on the site?
jeez, whats next? banning access to snarky marketing blogs?
I don’t think banning Facebook would do the trick, nor is banning any other social medium for that fact. Employees who are challenged and well-motivated do not need this kind of policy.
Andy: Thanks for commenting (and sorry for the slow reply to your comment). You and I are in complete agreement about the futility of banning Facebook.