As long ago as early 2009, SHRM (Society for HR Managers) was recomending that businesses consider adding a Twitter policy to their Employee Handbooks. Apparently, it isn't about the hours of lost productivity (its isn't??), but about the content of the tweets. We went through the same problem when blogs became popular.Here are some examaples:
The NBA slapped Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with a $25,000 fine for publicly criticizing the officials after Denver's 103-101 win over Dallas.
A building materials company and its owner have appealed a $12.6 million verdict against them, alleging that a juror posted messages on Twitter.com during the trial that show he's biased against them.
Suggestions for policy include reminding employees to tweet on their own time, to make it clear they are not speaking an behalf of the company, and don't disclose any confidential company information.
This strategy won't keep employees from tweeting, but it will give a company some leverage if they are caught hurting the company as a result.
And we'd all better get a handle on technology in the workplace soon -- the young employees coming into the workplace are used to jumping from one thing to another -- are we gojng to be able to supervise that?
Although I think corporate policies that cover use of the social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are important, I think it's equally important that companies ask their IT departments to block these sites to discourage employees from using them during working hours. Blocking, of course, won't stop the more determined employees from accessing these sites from their personal cell phones, but it can help to cut down on lost productivity.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I think there is a much larger problem that face employers and workers. The problem is the "blurring" that has become so prevalent between work and non-work time. Since so many employees end up bringing work home in the evenings, or answering work-related calls after hours, there's no longer a clean line between the two. The lack of clear boundaries between work and off hours not only encourages employees to work during their time off, but it also tempts people to bring non-work-related activities into the office.
This is definitely a dilemma for most companies and there are no easy answers.