Like a lot of things it's about balance
You can't get away from the use of personal devices whether it's a tablet or smart phone and the access they give to the Internet, SM, games etc.
If someone is lazy or doesn't want to work they won't, either by playing on their iPad, BB etc. or drinking coffee, reading the paper or going to fictitious off site meetings. SM and mobile computing is not the root problem. Hire the right people in the first place including the line managers who should be addressing non performance of staff.
Our organisation has set up a forum where our s/w engineers can develop their own apps and deploy to staff via an app store style platform. The response has only been positive from both the engineers and staff that download the apps.
Not specific to SM but the point is we embrace new tech, behaviour and ways of working with the right level of controls for a corporate (e.g. Productivity, security etc.). It does motivate people and stimulates ideas and I'm working on a dedicated support service for this type of IT consumerisation. Again my management team are enthusiastically working on implementing this including coming up with a counter proposal resourced within the existing budget when the idea was nearly stopped due to financial pressures.
Rather than reject this type of thing out of hand I recommend evaluating it to make an informed decision on whether all or some of it can add value to your business whatever it is.
Hello Tomorrow!
