Sorry I could not help myself …. But as we move forward in integrating our lives into cyberspace we find that more and more of people are spending more of their time online.

Just to put it into perspective did you know that 91% of all employees are currently signed up and using some sort of social network while at work? Did you know that 15% of those employees spend the majority of their day logged into those sites while 61% of them log in and out periodically throughout the day to check status and post messages. So the billion-dollar question becomes, how do I control the flow of employees who are converging online while at work? There is always site blocking and proxies but those don’t always work as employees are getting smarter and finding ways around them such as jumping on proxy servers that allow you to surf the internet anonymously. There is port blocking … but with everything moving online do you really want to remove the internet all together? Unfortunately, there is not a simple solution since it has been found that there are some social networks use other ports outside of the typical port 80 or 443. Controlling the flow has to be a collective effort of policies and technology such as FACETIME’s SaaS appliance but in the end is blocking Social Networking the right solution?

Here are a few pros and cons to social networking in the work place.

Pros

• A happy employee is a productive employee – Given that correct policies are written, allowing your employees a certain amount of time to use for leisure such as breaks or lunch can have a positive impact in productivity.
• Stay up to date with your vendors - Now that the majority of companies are using social media to release information your employees may be able to stay ahead of the pack if their job entails staying current with other businesses or trends.
• Your business needs to get the word out – You may have employees that are designated to keeping your social media current and if you are trying to spread the word, encouraging other employees to post updates about what there company is doing extends the businesses reach.

Cons

• Productivity Killer – Like anything else sometimes there are those who take advantage of the courtesy extended and abuse the system.
• Socially worried – Allowing your employees to keep current on updates can take away from their ability to focus on the office and current tasks instead they occupy themselves with what Jane from accounting had for lunch.
• Disgruntled and posted – A business image can be one of the biggest factors in how potential clients view the organization but if John, Jill and Larry start to post comments about how they are unhappy with the working conditions, this can have a negative effect on the business.