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I block this stuff for a living and I don't remember the last time I was on a network and pulled flow from their internet connection and facebook, youtube, twitter & some other time waster wasn't on the top ten list of things being done on the network.
It's simple, if you want people to get their work done, then block the sites. If it creates a big backlash you can always do what I do... create a "party time" rule in the firewall and let them surf over their lunch hour. That way everyone wins.
Just my humble opinion.
It's simple, if you want people to get their work done, then block the sites. If it creates a big backlash you can always do what I do... create a "party time" rule in the firewall and let them surf over their lunch hour. That way everyone wins.
Just my humble opinion.
I'm not going to launch a diatribe, just comment that I am amazed at the level of tyranny and lack of imagination that has been expressed here - thankfully balanced by some sane comment. For those that think that social media has no place in Healthcare: Can you show me a more cost effective way to get the word out about diabetes, smoking, alcohol abuse...etc etc?
Sure, it is conceivable that someone who works in a health practice could potentially tweet patient information - never have heard of it happening - but that is an issue of core professionalism and no technology can be blamed for that. This also applies to all other areas in work-life. Instead of blanket punishing every employee for abusing work time try making an example of just the perpetrators through withdrawing privileges and foster a responsible culture.
Sure, it is conceivable that someone who works in a health practice could potentially tweet patient information - never have heard of it happening - but that is an issue of core professionalism and no technology can be blamed for that. This also applies to all other areas in work-life. Instead of blanket punishing every employee for abusing work time try making an example of just the perpetrators through withdrawing privileges and foster a responsible culture.
That's a great idea, but it should be handled by the community outreach employees or similar department. It shouldn't be in the hands of all employees, who may not know how to effectively phrase information so that it educates and doesn't scare.
The same applies to the public interactions of most companies.
The same applies to the public interactions of most companies.
I didn't realize that issues like the dangers of smoking and alcohol abuse were brand-new. Must be my imagination playing tricks on me, as I could have sworn I've been hearing about the dangers & side-effects for decades, as well as seeing those "Surgeon General" warnings on cigarette cartons/packs & advertisements all of this time...not to mention seeing & experiencing first-hand the effects in family members.
Now, if you're talking about doctors & nurses wanting to provide more up-to-the-minute results to particular patients ("Mr. Doe, here are your lab results..."), that would be different. But again, I think we can rely on something a little more private than Twitter or Facebook. Do you really want all of your Facebook friends to see the post from your doctor's office about your latest blood pressure/urine test results... or would you prefer to receive them in a more private e-mail? Same with appointments & exams: people really don't need to know that your urologist is expecting you next Tuesday, that's a private matter between you & him.
Now, if you're talking about doctors & nurses wanting to provide more up-to-the-minute results to particular patients ("Mr. Doe, here are your lab results..."), that would be different. But again, I think we can rely on something a little more private than Twitter or Facebook. Do you really want all of your Facebook friends to see the post from your doctor's office about your latest blood pressure/urine test results... or would you prefer to receive them in a more private e-mail? Same with appointments & exams: people really don't need to know that your urologist is expecting you next Tuesday, that's a private matter between you & him.
Would you allow your clerks to spend 2 hours on the phone "socializing" in the name communication, networking, publicity, morale, reputation, etc.?
Of course not.
There is only 1 reason to allow social networking: business need. My salespeople legitimately have that need. The rest don't. Do they abuse it? Yes. But nothing's perfect.
Jack: Try MBWA (a LOT) in a centralized organization (i.e. an office) that allows social networking. You'll have a new opinion VERY quickly.
Of course not.
There is only 1 reason to allow social networking: business need. My salespeople legitimately have that need. The rest don't. Do they abuse it? Yes. But nothing's perfect.
Jack: Try MBWA (a LOT) in a centralized organization (i.e. an office) that allows social networking. You'll have a new opinion VERY quickly.
I used to work at a company that blocks almost everything. Internet mail was blocked, social media was blocked. We had our own IM service so employees and clients could send/receive business related messaging. But I also worked in a place where they blocked almost nothing. Employee activity is monitored, I was tasked to occasionally have a look at the logs. Generally there was a bit of Facebook, but not excessive. With around 1,000 employees well under a hundred messages. But that was only through our network. I could see a number of people typing into their phones in the break room.
Plenty of valid arguments here to keep SM off of corporate and SMB networks. The only problem is that you are fighting a tide of young people that have been raised with SM. It is the exact same thing as trying to keep tablets and iphones out of the enterprise.
Frankly, I would rather have employees use SM on the company computers than to have the same communications taking place on their own devices. The complete untethering that is created because they are using their own devices gives employees the feeling that they can post whatever they want to social media sites (the boss/company sucks, etc.) . I can monitor the network and then send monthly departmental (targeted at the offending department) reminders concerning the acceptable use of SM and the consequences of violating the acceptable use policies laid out in the 'employee handbook'.
Get used to it, it is the future. The day might come when employees choose an employer because they are "facebook and Twitter friendly". Remember the generation you will be dealing with. Even some of the Gen X crowd is dumb enough to post stuff like "the boss sucks" on their FB page. Imagine a younger generation that feels no need to modify the privacy settings on their SM apps, and looks at corporate data policies as intrusive and unwelcome.
Brave new world, friends.
Frankly, I would rather have employees use SM on the company computers than to have the same communications taking place on their own devices. The complete untethering that is created because they are using their own devices gives employees the feeling that they can post whatever they want to social media sites (the boss/company sucks, etc.) . I can monitor the network and then send monthly departmental (targeted at the offending department) reminders concerning the acceptable use of SM and the consequences of violating the acceptable use policies laid out in the 'employee handbook'.
Get used to it, it is the future. The day might come when employees choose an employer because they are "facebook and Twitter friendly". Remember the generation you will be dealing with. Even some of the Gen X crowd is dumb enough to post stuff like "the boss sucks" on their FB page. Imagine a younger generation that feels no need to modify the privacy settings on their SM apps, and looks at corporate data policies as intrusive and unwelcome.
Brave new world, friends.
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!
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!
Companies that block social sites make the false comparison of thinking if the employee were not on that site, then s/he would be doing actual work. The fact is that some employees actually work at work whereas others will spend their time on the social network or on-line perusing news sites or off-line reading the newspaper or off-line hanging at the coffee pot or just hanging out in other cubes annoying the folks who are trying to work.
Same deal with managers. Some do their job and others waste their time blaming the wrong things and dealing with the wrong issues.
Same deal with managers. Some do their job and others waste their time blaming the wrong things and dealing with the wrong issues.
This is one of those things which management needs to assess on a case-by-case basis. Like allowing employees to take 'extra' cigarette breaks, personal phone calls or go a few minutes extra at lunch, anything has the potential to affect the bottom line but employee morale has a huge value as well. Consider it as an advertising expense. We allow it here but there's a very clear 'social media' policy in place and, considering the alternatives, no employee in his or her right mind would argue that the policy is 'unfair'. Like previous writers have said, employees ARE being paid to work, and it's fine to monitor and adjust social media usage as necessary.
With modern security solutions, it is possible to fine-tune who can access what and how.
Allowing company-wide social network access could be a productivity threat, and this extends to using personal email services and other sites famous for everything except getting work done.
As I have once heard..."when your employees are browsing away, they are stealing time and productivity from the company, and that is a crime". Would you accept your staff to go outside and speak on the mobile to their friends for 5 minutes every 20 minutes?
The temptation to open that browser and get immersed within it will also affect internal communication: staff are there.....however they??re not "on".
Allowing company-wide social network access could be a productivity threat, and this extends to using personal email services and other sites famous for everything except getting work done.
As I have once heard..."when your employees are browsing away, they are stealing time and productivity from the company, and that is a crime". Would you accept your staff to go outside and speak on the mobile to their friends for 5 minutes every 20 minutes?
The temptation to open that browser and get immersed within it will also affect internal communication: staff are there.....however they??re not "on".
The number one reason I hear from companies that have very sensitive client data is that they do not allow social networking because of the fear of an employee leaking out client data through Twitter, Facebook, etc. They are afraid that Mary Anne from Customer Service will take a photo and post it to her Facebook account to steal a clients identity.
Now Mary may be 67 years old but she is an avid Facebook user. She posts photos of her family, her pets, and even her art collection on Facebook daily. She always has scripture to quote daily for all her friends to see. However, don't let the perfect granny image fool you. She is secretly working with a network ring of hackers that steal people's identity and sell it for million of dollars each year. How else would could she afford a pre-owned 88' Buick LeSabre? It has dice hanging from the mirror so that right there is a dead give away.
Do companies have a legitimate worry about employees stealing clients data? If I did that, I rather not be known, work from an outside source, and try to hack my way in.
Now Mary may be 67 years old but she is an avid Facebook user. She posts photos of her family, her pets, and even her art collection on Facebook daily. She always has scripture to quote daily for all her friends to see. However, don't let the perfect granny image fool you. She is secretly working with a network ring of hackers that steal people's identity and sell it for million of dollars each year. How else would could she afford a pre-owned 88' Buick LeSabre? It has dice hanging from the mirror so that right there is a dead give away.
Do companies have a legitimate worry about employees stealing clients data? If I did that, I rather not be known, work from an outside source, and try to hack my way in.
...and tell her the cover has been blown. Damn, I KNEW I never should have given her those fuzzy dice.
1 - leaking data - a data breach can cost large fines and loss of reputation. Some social networking sites have tortuous privacy settings that are continually changing. You talk of collaboration, but what if that is between two people dealing with sensitive information e.g. a person requiring care at home?
2 - malware - social networking is yet another entry point for malware. Made worse if you use HTTPS because that then bypasses UTM and other perimeter protection methods.
3 - reputation - feeling annoyed - well venting your frustrations immediately to social media is not going to enhance the reputation of you or your employer
4 - legal - social media is publishing, and thus liable to the laws of libel. Journalists are (or should be grounded) in at least the basic law around this; your average Facebook user is not.
5 - security - the more that is posted publicly, the more data can be joined up and build a picture of an organisation - thus aiding in social engineering attacks
... add 5 more of your own
I hear all the arguments about it being great for publicity, but unless social media is totally different, consider the adage that applied up to now - "one dissatisified person tells 10 others; a happy person tells one". Thus negative information grows 10x faster and propagates 10x wider than positive information. Certainly when I look at comments on news articles, negative comments usually outweigh the positive comments significantly except for the occasional good news story (a rarity anyway).
There are some business for which utilising social media to its fullest extent is a business benefit, but for many others, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Back in the mid 1980s (circa 1986) I experimented with using a BBS to post common responses to technical support issues. (BBS were probably the first social media). However, in less than a month, it became clear that a limited number of individuals were using it to post personal attacks and so it was shut down.
Social media is not the great panacea that will make all businesses greater
2 - malware - social networking is yet another entry point for malware. Made worse if you use HTTPS because that then bypasses UTM and other perimeter protection methods.
3 - reputation - feeling annoyed - well venting your frustrations immediately to social media is not going to enhance the reputation of you or your employer
4 - legal - social media is publishing, and thus liable to the laws of libel. Journalists are (or should be grounded) in at least the basic law around this; your average Facebook user is not.
5 - security - the more that is posted publicly, the more data can be joined up and build a picture of an organisation - thus aiding in social engineering attacks
... add 5 more of your own
I hear all the arguments about it being great for publicity, but unless social media is totally different, consider the adage that applied up to now - "one dissatisified person tells 10 others; a happy person tells one". Thus negative information grows 10x faster and propagates 10x wider than positive information. Certainly when I look at comments on news articles, negative comments usually outweigh the positive comments significantly except for the occasional good news story (a rarity anyway).
There are some business for which utilising social media to its fullest extent is a business benefit, but for many others, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Back in the mid 1980s (circa 1986) I experimented with using a BBS to post common responses to technical support issues. (BBS were probably the first social media). However, in less than a month, it became clear that a limited number of individuals were using it to post personal attacks and so it was shut down.
Social media is not the great panacea that will make all businesses greater
The comment I would make was already expressed nicely by LK04. For every positive point made by the author, there could (and often is) a negative side concerning social networking in places of business.
Who wouldn't want networking from employees and the opportunity to bring new customers. Nice idea, but I read dozens of stories about employee misuse of social networking in the workplace, and have personally seen (in IT field) people waste an entire 8 hour workday with things such as Facebook. In fairness, I have seen this behavior also with non-social networking websites - such as personnel wasting hours at a time on ebay.
People will likely learn all the aspects of social networking on their own, but if a company wants to invest a small amount of time training certain employees in SN - fine. But not to give all employees carte blanche to use it on a daily work basis. At this point in time, the negatives will outweigh any possible positives.
Who wouldn't want networking from employees and the opportunity to bring new customers. Nice idea, but I read dozens of stories about employee misuse of social networking in the workplace, and have personally seen (in IT field) people waste an entire 8 hour workday with things such as Facebook. In fairness, I have seen this behavior also with non-social networking websites - such as personnel wasting hours at a time on ebay.
People will likely learn all the aspects of social networking on their own, but if a company wants to invest a small amount of time training certain employees in SN - fine. But not to give all employees carte blanche to use it on a daily work basis. At this point in time, the negatives will outweigh any possible positives.
Before my employer clamped down on unfettered Internet access, we monitored usage and discovered to our horror that 68% of traffic was to on-line dating sites. Our workforce is mostly married. So absolutely nothing good would come from unfettered access -- affairs and divorces hurt productivity and morale.
All those points can be turned around by the same forces that you tout as reasons for allowing social media and turn it into a disaster.
Waste of time
Loss of company data
Loss of reputation
Legal issues
Poor morale
and so on....
The only good thing I can see is that you may get a jump on discovering bad actors so that you can deal with them.
Waste of time
Loss of company data
Loss of reputation
Legal issues
Poor morale
and so on....
The only good thing I can see is that you may get a jump on discovering bad actors so that you can deal with them.
I must say, I thought of the big companies like Apple (and even Google) when I heard "transparency". Like the transparent iPhone pre-launches? People might like transparency, but when you look at the numbers, Apple seems to be doing nicely "behind closed doors"...
There is a time for security, too, and personally I'd prefer if all the folks at the bank weren't downloading Facebook widgets or visiting potentially malicious short URLs from Twitter...
Should sales and marketing teams be using these means - yes, I think so - but not all employees during work hours on their work systems.
There is a time for security, too, and personally I'd prefer if all the folks at the bank weren't downloading Facebook widgets or visiting potentially malicious short URLs from Twitter...
Should sales and marketing teams be using these means - yes, I think so - but not all employees during work hours on their work systems.
allow social networking. Everyone knows that networking and having all those "friends" is more important than having ability, loyalty, intelligence and a strong work ethic.
Sounds like the green light to mess around all day and not do any company related real work. If everyone did this in the name of marketing what a joke company you would be. Absolute waste of company time not to mention the security risk and words being being fixed in stone that could damage the company. Good try.
Many of my IT counterparts in my company and other organizations are the reason the company blocks many social networking sites. There are times when they behave like overzealous centurions and advise higher-ups to block these sites. Fortunately, some senior management types at work have requested to unblock the more popular sites.
I have found some organizations blocking cloud sites. I get messages from users at these places because they cannot access a file from my site (linked to a cloud service). Their IT geeks will unblock long enough for them to download the document then block it again. I think they confuse the cloud with bit torrents. Or maybe they're just control freaks.
I have found some organizations blocking cloud sites. I get messages from users at these places because they cannot access a file from my site (linked to a cloud service). Their IT geeks will unblock long enough for them to download the document then block it again. I think they confuse the cloud with bit torrents. Or maybe they're just control freaks.
Kidding, right? I have a young fellow working (ok, occasionally working) in my section who, out of an 8 hour day, might do 3 hours work. The rest of the time is spent on his phone updating facecrook. Personally, I'd like to install a signal jammer for mobiles here also. FB, ebay, twitter, etc are blocked at the server.
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