What an irony: With the 20th year milestone celebration of the Berlin Wall’s fall, the building of virtual walls and putting employees behind an iron curtain appears to be gaining ground. The Iron Fist approach to monitoring and removing communication rights seems to be a bit ironic in pro-capitalistic settings.
A recent study by the Morse Consulting firm reveals that UK employees spend about 4O minutes a week Tweeting. The firm concluded that this lost time is the equivalent of $2.39-billion of lost productivity. Not only do reports like this support the idea of enterprises shutting down access to information, they can potentially kill creative marketing opportunities. I imagine that similar data was the catalyst behind McCain’s support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009.
So how about using the free market and simply changing with the times? John Sviokla of Diamond Management Consultants pointed out at Net Week’s Fourth Annual IT Directors’ Forum that getting rid of social networking could be a huge mistake for companies. To use his words, “incredible opportunities” may be overlooked. Instead of building walls via proxy blockers, citing Metcalfe’s Law, enterprises can use social networking not only to build their value, but for learning and experimenting.
So, how can enterprises capitalize on their Tweeting twits?
• As the Brits once practiced “teatime,” maybe it is time to change that to a more relevant slogan: Twitter Time (TT). TT could replace the American lunchtime. There is profit to be made—not walls to be built.
• Businesses could revamp their cafeterias with netbook docks and give a new meaning to “Internet cafes”. Employees might opt to stay onsite—saving time lost travelling to various eateries. In the long run, this may save a company money.
• From the learning aspect, I know firsthand that I had the most successful interaction from my middle and high school IT students when I decided to meet them where they congregate—Facebook. Instead of choosing to reprimand them for being engaged in social networking, I chose to meet them in their territory and teach them there. In terms of engagement and learning, I had over an 80% performance towards product completion. Not surprisingly, my stats didn’t stop the proxy wall from going up!
• Give employees something to talk about—content, content, content.
- Create a new IT position that specializes in providing interesting information that can draw the attention of your company employees and their followers—good test to see who is reading what.
- Post new content at the time of day that coincides with lunch.
• Build that database!
- Increase the company database by pulling in friends of employees to an informative company community that provides compelling content. Companies never know when a particular type of talent may be needed, so having a ready pool of individuals with similar interest can build brand awareness and improved image management for a company.
Hmmm. In the end, I have to wonder what former President Reagan would have said to businesses that seek to build walls to communication: Mrs. CIO, tear down this firewall!
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