The Ban on Employees Accessing Facebook

Earlier this month, in puts it, “This would be a retarded move for ANY company, let alone a company that is trying to position itself as a company that “gets” online.”

I wouldn’t suggest any organization simply has a free-for-all approach where anything goes on the internet. In the organizational context, you have to have some clear guidance in place where everyone knows what the ground rules are.

In any case, who’s deciding what a business need is? If I look at my own list of friends in Facebook, some 150 people, close to 90 percent of those are people I’ve connected with originally from a business perspective. Some of those people have become friends socially.

My example may not be typical, but I value Facebook as a place to build both my business and my social connections. I bet there are employees in any of the organizations mentioned here who do the same (but from home, not on the workplace network).

Rather than have sweeping prohibitions in place, enforced by Orwellian behaviours with technology, it would make far more sense to try and understand the changing nature of relationship development today and consider ways that will enable employees to use sites like Facebook. There is a business benefit.

Ask Microsoft (who has