Top 10 reasons to ban social media access at work
Written by Ron Desi on March 11, 2010 – 10:02 am -I was part of a panel at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit yesterday (March 10th). I was on stage with Jeanne Homl from NASA and Walton Smith from Booz Allen Hamilton. The moderator asked how many participants in the room worked for companies that ban social media access. About two-thirds of the audience raised their hands. After seeing this many hands go up, I had a change of heart.
I’ve changed my mind from my prior opinion. I now believe that organizations should BAN social media access.
Here are the Top 10 reasons why:
Number 10: Social media is a fad. Two years from now we’ll be moving to the next marketing or management fad.
Number 9: Social media takes control away from the corporation; and you can’t have that. Controlling the message is what it’s all about.
Number 8: Employees are simply going to goof off. They don’t do anything non-work related now like go to the water cooler, the coffee machine, or even the bathroom.
Number 7: Social media is only good for watching funny YouTube videos and knowing what a former classmate is eating for lunch. Social media, please, what a waste of time.
Number 6:Social media serves no business purpose. Your salespeople are top notch. Come on, will teaching them how to use LinkedIn really make them more effective?
Number 5: Employees simply cannot be trusted and will likely say things in social networks that will become bad publicity for your company.
Number 4: Millennials expect access to social media at work. Hey, Millennials, wake up! It’s a bad economy. Be happy you have a job.
Number 3: Your team already shares knowledge effectively and adding another technology to the mix is simply going to make it more confusing.
Number 2: Social media will simply bring viruses and Trojan horses into your network. For security reasons alone it should be banned!
And the Number 1 reason for banning social media access:
Your competition isn’t using it, so why should you.
Please note: This article was written with a bit of sarcasm and a dash of wit. In reality I believe social media should not be banned but embraced by organizations. Consider this post “reverse psychology” for those organizations that ban employee access to social media.
Posted in Social Media | 10 Comments »
March 11th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I love it! Great piece. I’ll say this- JetBlue’s recent Twitter facilitated flashmobs for free tickets were a great example of both sides of this argument. It was fantastically executed social media marketing for JetBlue, but it was also hundreds of people leaving the office in the middle of the day (I believe) because they were following a tweet. Thank you for a good laugh today.
March 11th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Glad you liked it. I was feeling the need to be a bit cynical on this topic.
March 12th, 2010 at 4:12 am
I have to disagree with you on this one.
You’ve just crippled my ability to follow the following on Twitter:
CNN
NPR
GartnerAnalyst
TechnologyGuru’s
etc.
I use it as a tool to listen to “channels” of information. Saves me from having to go to each individual site daily. Time slicing is important and it’s a tool that enables you to be more effective.
As for Facebook – it’s my “Contacts List”. If you meet a vendor, prospective employee, a peer at another organization – it’s a way to easily stay connected to them. Even you solicited participants to a survey you wanted to conduct. Wasn’t that work?
If you’re saying people shouldn’t be playing FB MafiaWars at work – I’d probably agree but why do I have to lock it down? Isn’t that a performance issue?
I don’t buy the virus excuse. They are everywhere. Unless you plan to cut yourself off from the whole world.
March 12th, 2010 at 7:08 am
Thank you so much for participating in the panel. The audience got great value from your insight and experience. Really enjoyed this post, too. After three intense days of discussion on social media, I needed some levity.
March 12th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Michael – To be clear, I do NOT think social media should be banned.
I was using cynicism and sarcasm to prove a point that banning social media is a bad idea.
March 12th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Carol – I was glad to be a part of panel. Glad you liked this post!
March 13th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Ron – oh geez. Thank goodness.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
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March 19th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
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June 14th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
I’m a consultant working with Palo Alto Networks; they have an excellent whitepaper on the subject of blocking social networking apps that you may have to worry about, “To Block or Not. Is that the question?” here: http://bit.ly/d2NZRp. It has lots of insightful and useful information about identifying and controlling Enterprise 2.0 apps (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc.)