The banning Facebook issue seems to have caught on in the press today. There is an article on the BBC News site here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6969791.stm. I was with a customer yesterday who asked a similar question. My response is that you deal with someone who spends too much time on Facebook in exactly the same way as someone who spends too much time emailing, or taking too long at lunch. Their performance drops and you put them through standard disciplinary reviews. Of course, in certain roles it could be that their performance increases as they take on board new ideas about work from the contacts they make. Many of my Facebook contacts are business colleagues as well as friends, and we use it to exchange ideas. I see a similarity with mobile phones. Companies don't ban them, equally they don't allow employees to expense any handset or any tariff. There is the corporate handset and corporate tariff and an acceptable usage policy for personal calls. This is exactly how it should work for Facebook and other sites. The same fears arose over instant messaging - the smart companies did not ban it but rather adopted it and turned it into a business tool.  The new generation of employees coming into the workplace will not accept an environment into which they cannot bring their social network, as it is key to their professional success in exactly the same way that a 'traditional' worker would not accept an environment where they could not use their 'black book' of contacts.

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Caspar Craven, 9 months ago

I have a slightly different take on assessing the value of social networks. The analogy I look to is that of "real life" conferences, seminars and trade shows etc. The first question is what cost and value are placed on these by organisation? For some companies I know, trade shows are their primary marketing focus and what they spend vast resources on - both direct cost and people time. So, if a lot of cost is spent, what is the value? Well clearly there is some learning and direct knowledge transfer which has value. However, I see the most important part being the relationship building, I hate the word networking, but that is a large part of it - it is about creating connections, and dare I say it emotional connections which form the basis of decisions on who you would and wouldnt buy from. So, if that is the value (in my view) of conferences, doesnt it follow that social networks can provide the same thing? I can see the fear factor around uncontrolled use and employees spending 5 hours a day for interaction with their mates, and would agree that is a poor use of company resources. However, I would be reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water around tools such as these and the behaviours that they start to generate when you compare it to the value (and cost) spent on comparable activities.

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