News
& Updates
November
2008
This
Issue
Personal
Interactions Matter
(Article
below)
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Personal
Interactions Matter
By
Naomi Simson
Last
week's news highlighted the different variations of the Facebook story.
It is widely believed that Facebook could be responsible for a loss
of $5 billion to businesses, as productive work hours
turn into time spent updating profiles and connecting with friends and
colleagues across the globe.
In
many companies across Australia and New Zealand, Facebook is fast being
added to the list of sites on the 'banned' list, joining MSN Messenger,
MySpace, YouTube and Second Life, which are also considered addictive,
distracting and a drain on productivity.
Can
limiting access prove to be a productivity drain in itself?
According
to a survey undertaken by Leadership Management Australia, "enjoying
a good relationship with other staff" is one of the top 5 factors
that will positively influence an employee. And today, many of these
relationships start with email interactions. We are now used to saying
"it's great to finally meet you in person" because in many
cases our daily virtual interactions outnumber our personal interactions.
Facebook is just another way to connect with people, putting a face
to a name immediately, and is being used by many organisations positively
- providing social connectivity amongst those who don't have time to
interact personally every day.
According
to Matt Cohler, Facebook's VP of strategy, "we're seeing pretty
encouraging levels of activity in work networks." Cohler gave examples
of companies like Shell Oil, Procter & Gamble, and General Electric
who have thousands of employees in their networks.
And
for the generation of employees who are growing up connected to the
internet, restricting access at work can be a job deal breaker. Anne
Kirah, Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist who spoke at last year's
TechEd conference in Sydney said during her opening keynote, "Jobseekers
will think twice about employers who lock down work internet access."
"These
kids are saying: forget it! I don't want to work with you. I don't want
to work at a place where I can't be freely online during the day."
"People
that I meet are saying this to me every day, all over the world."
"Companies
all over the world are saying, oh, you can't be on the internet while
you're at work. You can't be on instant messaging at work..." she
said. "These are digital immigrant ideas."
Kirah
defines 'digital immigrants' as people who were not born into the digital
lifestyle and view it as a distraction rather than an integral part
of life. The younger generation of workers have been using computers
and mobile phones since birth and she calls them 'digital natives'.
Could
limiting access to these lines of communication antagonize employees
resulting in poor morale and even staff turnover?
"Bill
Gates said years ago that if you worry about internet productivity,
you're worrying about people stealing pens from your stationery cupboard...
there are bigger things to worry about."
But
of course, there are serious threats when it comes to allowing access
to sites like Facebook in the work place. In any popular platform there
are always going to be loopholes for the unscrupulous to exploit; hacking
is a threat that remains constant and employers need to make informed
choices on whether the benefits outweigh the risks. If access is enabled,
can it be harnessed productively?
Free
internet access can be abused, but if an employee is actively disengaged
in an organisation this is likely to be the outlet, not the cause. The
Gallup Organisation defines the term 'Actively Disengaged' as
employees who aren't just unhappy at work, but those that are also busy
acting out their unhappiness by undermining their engaged co-workers
accomplishments.
Even
if employers choose to block Facebook and similar sites for these reasons,
there is still much to be learned and observed from what causes them
to be the phenomenon's they are.
At
RedBalloon, we find that clients with internal blogs and intranets that
have a social component to them are most likely to thrive. Even if access
to the internet is restricted in your workplace, encouraging picture
boards, internal slide shows and movie nights can help employees share
their stories. With more than 1500 experiences on RedBalloon, we find
people choose some very different things and people love to know 'what
it was like for them.' At RedBalloon, we even have a dedicated flickr
site where our team photos are
regularly posted for all to admire.
It
still comes down to the fact that "we enjoy talking about our experiences
much more than our possessions.
Talking
about our experiences - including shared experiences - is the stock
in trade of our relationships.Good relationships are strongly associated
with happiness." Gittins, R. (2004, February 18) "Activity
is the goods for true satisfaction" The Sydney Morning Herald.
Whether
you choose to embrace the power of social networking or lock it down
altogether, the one thing to take from its success is that facilitating
personal interactions still matters.
Naomi
Simson is CEO of RedBalloon
Days , One of Australia's leading 'Staff Incentive' providers.
For more information on RedBalloon Days visit their Site Click
Here
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