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I just say the revolution hasn't come yet.

It's a huge distraction and a waste of time. It's a valuable resource to be embraced at all levels. Of course, it's both, but learning how to manage your time is perhaps one of the most important challenges in any work situation. But the management of our time as it relates to this relatively new set of distractions is something many of us (me included in some cases) have yet to master. Freedom to find your own ways of working effectively is important, but if you can't manage the the right balance between being productive and using social networking wisely, then you should be prepared to be replaced.

I worked for an NGO where the staff was very active and very connected via FB. It did wonders for corporate-community, expression and culture. In a mission-driven organization it does something amazing for the intelligence, real-time interactivity, and human-ness of the culture to be networked and interacting via the social web.

Overtime, as the general whole became more tech savvy - driven by an innate need to be more 'cool'ly connected - new concepts for productivity, relevance, and PR started floating up the chain-of-command into department and board meetings.

We are in the biz of relationship building, the corp world needs to utilize #socialmedia for such.

Social media should be allowed in the workplace. What is a huge distraction and waste of time is the people who take 5-10 smoke breaks a day and are hailed as great employees because they work through lunch, although their smoke break totals are like taking two lunches. Another waste of time is most of the time spent in meetings where absolutely nothing gets accomplished, the same ideas are rehashed over and over and it is more about blowing political smoke and huffing and puffing over power in the office versus accomplishing tasks individually or as a team. Checking a facebook account for 5 minutes a day is hardly the same as "double lunch breaks" or 3 hour meetings where nothing is accomplished. For many employers, I think it is the fear of technology and the lack of control they have over social media. They are more concerned with power than having happy employees. In regards to social media, both employee and employer have to remember that moderation is the key, as with anything else (except m&ms of course.)

I had one job, one out of all of them in my life, where the concern of the employee mattered, they embraced new ideas and people were happy to come to work. Wait a minute, that never happened. Sorry. LOL.

I absolutely agree, based on my personal experience of working on a company that allowed full access to the digital media in the office. I simply cannot believe that statistic about productivity drops.

@oscar - I guess it depends on how they measure productivity eh, old paradigm parameters.. . socialmedia not a straight line towards agenda item completion.

I agree with Trudy. Working at a company that does not block any website, I have to say that those sites are a powerful way of keeping people happy at work. And that goes a long way in terms of motivation.

I am definitely more worried about:
- Useless (and endless) meetings;
- People that should definitely not have been hired for a particular job because they have no clue what they're doing;
- Endless hierarchy levels where people cannot agree on the direction to go.

These are much worse than people using facebook for 2 minutes, which in fact is much less than a pause for a smoke ;)

It is not a good practise to use fb or orkut or myspace any of these kind of social ntwrking sites by employees other than let's say HR, marketing, sales or ext communication officer/ PR. I feel it's important how these departments use these platforms. Capability building and sense of integrity has to be built so tht the time spent on social ntwrking gives a higher ROI

trudy,
THAT was funny, well done!
It is a rare enterprise that really does care about the people. Profit per employee is always a very up front metric for a business owner and the real tools of engagement always look like a profit drain until you track the results.
@mnclayton

I think productivity is only perceived to drop.

When checking SM sites I may not be working at that precise moment so you could say that it is SM's fault that my productivity is down, but in general the reason I am spending the time checking SM in the first place is because I am not busy enough and need to fill time with something though-provoking. I glance at my FB news feeds briefly or glance over Twitter updates briefly (using Tweetdeck so it is all just a quick glimpse), and if I see an article that looks interesting then I spend the time to read it. SM for me is a time filler that has an added benefit of often informing me of interesting industry trends, learnings and related information.

Certainly more efficient use of time than long meetings in which nothing gets accomplished I would say - lord knows plenty of those go on around here.

Thanks Pedro and mnclayton.

Here is the thing, for some companies, I don't think profit is number one either, perhaps to executives but not to the middle. I have worked at several companies where even if an employee's actions did not contribute to the bottom line and was even a deterrent in terms of productivity (like they do a crap job and then I have to fix it, thus taking time away from my work, but they are considered team players since they show up to happy hour), if they appeared to be "loyal" and fell in line with whatever the middle managers said they were viewed as good employees. Because I work hard, complete tasks accurately but perhaps put on headphones while I work (call it an INTJ-ism) instead of hanging out in the lunch room or didn't show up to happy hour, I am perceived as a poor employee and treated badly, although I am actually adding to the productivity of the company. I think perceptions can cloud how employees are treated and productivity measurements. The people at the top are too busy to notice those intricacies of middle management and middle employee culture. Of course when the quarter/season numbers came out, I received a low-voiced thanks for a minute but those pre-conceived ideas of who is productive and who is not started back up 60 seconds later.

Had to sign a No Internet form @ work. I can understand why. I thought that I would clean my house today...lol...much too busy tweeting!

If a company measures it's employee ROI in terms of "personal productivity" they'd fear the "distractions" of social media and see it as a time sink.

If a company measures it's employee ROI from "collaborative productivity", however, the equation changes and social media enhances relationship and team interaction.