BBC Radio has recently brought to our attention that companies have begun to ban social networking sites in the workplace. In a recent survey, in fact, about three-fourths of companies have banned sites like YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook. As this is extremely interesting, many employees feel strongly that this move is entirely out of line, while others disagree saying that these types of sites should not be accessed during a typical work day (as they can serve as distracting). This particular article brought up a very interactive commentary where people were able to blog about their own opinions regarding this controversial dilemma. One woman noted that these social networking sites were horrible for companies, as they not only distract employees from what they ought to be doing, but they also make employees less communicative with one another in the office. Another individual, on the other hand, genuinely resented how companies were banning these sites. He noted that he only visits these sites during his lunch hour or on his break time.
After reading this article, I firmly believe that these sites are not appropriate for the employee to visit during a workday. Although I am an avid viewer of Facebook and YouTube, I do not visit these sites while I am in class. The same concept applies at a job. When companies hire employees, they are not looking to pay them to serf the web at their leisure. They are paying them to perform a certain task. Hence, I agree with a few of the people who commented on the blog who said that these sites make employees less interactive with one another. If I were running a company, I would not want my employers to be visiting these sites. Finally, this article parallels nicely with our course, as it discusses the power of social networking sites, while allowing people to comment and share their opinions with the author (the notion of the rise of the Pro-Am). Everyone in the class can benefit from reading this, to help familiarize oneself with the controversy surrounding sites like Facebook, that we visit daily.
4 comments:
I thought this was a super interesting article because this whole concept was a huge deal at my internship this past summer. The company had to "block" youtube, facebook, and myspace from their servers so you could not access it in the building. It is a very distracting thing and could be very detrimental to some employees work days. The funny thing is, there were employees who spent even MORE time finding technical loopholes to get around it. hahahahaha. defeats the whole purpose I guess!
This was also an issue at my workplace this summer. Many employees would visit non work-related websites throughout the day, and other interns would visit Facebook. The Director of Technology was asked to monitor sites that were visited, and report to management. I believe visiting these types of sites during the work day is very inappropriate and unacceptable.
my dad was telling me about this at his work. he says that not only sites like youtube and facebook get blocked, but even sites like espn.com. to make things even more difficult for employees to mess around during work hours, every time they connect to the company's server on their company computers, any software not on an approved list is automatically removed. while this is good to prevent a computer virus problem, it sure does hinder your ability to screw around at work. the only thing close to getting around this problem is using aim express; which basicially runs instant messanger through an internet browser (useful while doing work in computer lab or library computers)
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