Networked workers can bring many opportunities to an
organization, especially those in a field such as mine. When I am working from my home office, I
spend the majority of my day working online, researching regulations online
through various government websites, seeking out advice from colleagues through
e-mail, or simply surfing message boards to find out what health care
compliance professionals are having difficulty with. Networked professionals are connected. They understand how to work the web to their
advantage, finding the information out there that is good and putting aside
information that is not.
Connections to colleagues can be used as opportunities, in
my business as potential sales.
Corresponding online with a colleague from a provider that is having an
issue may lead to my suggesting a webinar or a class that I have upcoming on
the topic, ultimately improving business for my company.
This free and open internet access is not all about
productivity however. For every 5 clicks
on my machine to the Federal Register site, there is at least one to
Facebook. Facebook is, in my opinion,
the biggest drain on employee productivity to occur since the water cooler and
coffee machine. Some employer sites
block access to sites like Facebook, but I have found when that occurs, they
simply surf there on their phones instead, still wasting work time. A simple thought on how to make Facebook
tolerable for work time, if it’s going to be allowed - make a company
page. If you are the type of company that
can get employees involved on their FB page, answering questions or posting
information, allow that. Otherwise,
perhaps have a ‘closed’ group page where employees can post information about
office goings-on, such as gatherings, birthdays, what’s for lunch in the café,
and other office fun. Make FB office related
as well as simply a social networking site.
We have discussed many challenges of networked workers over
the past several weeks, such as always being ‘on’ and the difficulty of the
work/life balance. I face this as a
telecommuter and ‘road warrior’, but everyone that is expected to be networked
24/7 can face this as well. As Madden and
Jones state, twenty percent of workers state they are doing some work from
home every day. This is a direct effect
of always being ‘on’ and not being able to escape from work.
Networked workers are simply what you will likely have in
today’s professional, like it or not. In
my opinion, as a hiring manager they are the workers you want in order to
function efficiently and effectively in today’s business environment.
Jill - you make a great point about the ineffectiveness of employers blocking popular sites like Facebook. Associates have their phones where they can check these sites, which seems to me like a chance to lose more productivity than simply allowing them to check those sites on their work machines in a responsible manner.
ReplyDeleteIn my organization, we do block categories of sites from Associates that include dropbox/google drive-like sites that would allow Associates to move large quantities of intellectual property to their personal sites in order to protect our IP, but do allow exceptions for business needs.
In my experience, people that really want to do something will find a way to do it - whether it is stealing company data or checking their social media sites. Leaders in organizations need to choose their battles appropriately and weigh the costs of loss of employee engagement due to such policies against potential business gains. I think most employers will find that restricting access to personal email, Facebook, etc will cost more in terms of their culture than any productivity losses from a few minutes spent here and there by their employees on those sites.
thanks for your post!
I think your point that "...people that really want to do something will find a way to do it - whether it is stealing company data or checking their social media sites..." is a key one. Hire for integrity and monitor ... but do not think that blocking sites is the total answer.
DeleteBlocking drop-box like sites makes good sense in an organization where the loss of intellectual property can be harmful. At my most recent former employer, they blocked all access to those types of sites, but we had an FTP site to move our large files for the books we wrote and moved between ourselves, our copy editors, desktop publishing, etc. This site was monitored and they reminded us of that every time we uploaded or downloaded something to it.
ReplyDeleteIn an health care organization, sharing information on the web can be incredibly harmful if the staff isn't 'smart' about what they're sharing. Share positives about the experience you're having at the cafeteria today, but not about the 94 year old female patient you just had to deal with in the emergency department today. We had a terrible case at my local facility where a nurses aide was taking pictures of patients in the bathroom and uploading them to Facebook. How this girl didn't end up in major legal trouble I don't know - but she simply lost her job. I'd have pressed charges against her for whatever law I could figure out that she was breaking, outside of HIPAA and a cadre of other health care specific laws. Just a sad situation.
Nice post! I totally agree that co-opting social media for the organization makes a lot of sense!
ReplyDeleteYour post was interesting. I would choose to hire a networked worker as well. I think that the good does outweigh the bad. There are times though when we have to deal with people making poor decisions. I recently came across a post from a person that works at a different school. He was visiting a friend on another campus and post how much he enjoyed it and how he would like to work there. That kind of fired me up. What would you think if you were the person’s current employer? Would you want to have a current employee saying that they want to work somewhere else? I think that we have all said something like this at one time in our life. I know that I have said something. The difference is that I didn’t broadcast it to the world. I said it directly to a friend. As we get more interconnected I think that the lines of what is appropriate and what isn’t will continue to blur. That will be an issue. The question is: Can you deal with it?
ReplyDeleteJK