Apparently it is a slow news day! The entire newsosphere is rolling out the most stupid story I have ever heard. According to the Toriegraph the UK is losing some £1.58bn in wasted time every year to the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other social media web sites. On the other hand the London Evening Standard is reporting that Workers tweet away £325m of time in the office. Who is next? The Guardian? The Times? Will we see it headline on Newsnight tonight? Maybe that’s why postal workers are on strike? The lack of availability to get in on the time wasting act!
The idea that 100% of time spent on Social Media sites is a complete waste of time is stupid in itself. For those of us in the IT world, blogging, emailing and social media are essential to our everyday work and personal life, and of course sometimes separating the two is hard, but there are plenty of businesses that are thriving from the benefit of enhanced opportunities to reach their existing and potential customers. I am not talking about small 1-man-bands with little way to reach out in the past, but medium-sized startups and chains of larger enterprises, even our favourite museums are getting in on the act these days, and in fact entire new service industries have grown up around social media.
Of course there are those who spend more time on Twitter or Facebook at their work computer than they should, but you will never be able to stop them. To small business the cost of putting in a firewall is as prohibitive as the time lost monthly or annually. And you will never be able to stop them access those social media apps on an iPhone or 3G mobile attached to a mobile network. Wireless connectivity is pervasive in the city!
I suppose there is only so far you can go with blocking and monitoring your workforce and of course time wasting should be frowned upon, but to suggest that access to email and social media outside of work should be completely blocked would be to also shut out a complete world of opportunity. Moreover, workers are not mere automata, and the more time they are driven to stay in the office, the more ways they will find to connect with the outside world and create a more congenial life.
Maybe it is time that the Brits adopted a more continental lifestyle and accept there is a life outside the office!
Web-head & art collector, living in East London and huffing on the fumes of the planet since '78. Here are my thoughts.
No Comments so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.