Blocking Social Media to increase productivity?
While listening to a recent Typical Mac User Podcast episode, Victor’s wife made a comment about her iPhone that struck me as very interesting. Paraphrasing, she suggested that the iPhone’s internet access was very important to her, because when she’s at work the network has many of the things she needs to use to take care of her personal business blocked.
Gee, wonder how much money is spent by companies blocking social media sites in order to ensure that their employees don’t waste any company time. Wonder how many of those employees still manage to find ways to work around that because there are things they simply need to take care of, information they need to look up, messages they need to send, etc., just like Mary.
Once again, I’m going to point out how much of a waste of time and resources most web-blocking is. How about, instead of spending all the money on hardware, software, and monitoring, you spent more time recruiting and retaining good, trustworthy people, and then actually trusted them to do their job? The bright ones are going to figure out how to work around you anyway, because there’s simply too much useful stuff on the web for them. What are you going to do ban cell phones? Restrict their ability to leave their desks so they don’t socialize?
Most of all, those really talented, trustworthy folks who work for you now, might not be willing to continue to do that when you start treating them with suspicion. They might work for your competitor instead.
