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As I’ve written about before, many organisations are concerned about allowing their employees to have access to social networks such as Facebook. In a previous article about Facebook, I provided tips on actions you can take and why social networks in corporates can provide competitive advantage.

So I was delighted to read an article in The Times outlining how some organisations are finding that letting their employees access social networks to support collaboration and sharing of ideas.

The article showcased Cisco Systems who encourage its 65,000 employees to use social-networking sites such as Facebook, and it operates its own social network - the Idea Zone or I-Zone for short – that enables their people to invite other employees respond to ideas. I guess you could see this as the 21st century answer to an interactive “suggestion box” that many organisation put in place in the 1980’s.

Cisco has also just been listed as the 6th best place to work in U.S. in the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies To Work For 2008 list and ranks number four among large companies. It is also featured on the All-Star list as a result of being included on the the Best Companies list every year since it was first published in 1998.

The article goes on to comment about a report by the British internet-security firm Clearswift who claim that two-thirds of British companies have banned employees from using social-networking sites. The reasons for banning access to social networks were attributed to issues of security and protecting information from being leaked onto the web and the issue of productivity. Apparently half of the HR professionals surveyed by Clearswift said they had disciplined employees for time wasting on the internet.

Oh come on guys! If your people are really going to want to sabotage your company and share commecially sensitive information they can take documents and upload them to a host of sites, blog about the information, or even just talk about what you are up to to their friends and to your competitors. Don’t UK companies have trust in their employees? Remember trust is one of the keys to building a collaborative an high performing workplace.

As for HR managers disciplining staff for wasting time on the internet:

1. you should not be disciplining – your line managers should have the accountability for management of their people
2. why aren’t you measuring outcomes versus inputs? In the workplace of today we should have moved beyond the hours people spend on the job as a measure of their performance and effectiveness
3. no wonder the HR function has not developed it’s reputation and constantly gets accused of not adding value
4. have you taken the time to invest in learning what social networks are and how you could harness them to support your communication and engagement policies across the business? (The Clearswift research found that one in five HR decision-makers were unfamiliar with the new networking technologies and two-thirds of HR professionals do not use them).

Apparently, (according to the Times article) the CIPD itself (the professional association for the HR community) restricts its employees’ access to social-networking sites to lunchtime only. I guess the employees in the CIPD should be thank ful they have access at all!

The article goes on to cite the case of the City law firm Allen & Overy who banned its staff from using Facebook only to be forced into an embarrassing u-turn after an avalanche of employee complaints. The article reports that the company had to e-mail their people acknowledging the strong reaction and conceding that Facebook was used by many employees for business as well as social networking. The Allen & Overy network on Facebook had 700 members.

Procter & Gamble on the other hand, the article reports, has been encouraging social networking using the InnoCentive network that links 100,000 scientists across the world to come up with new products. They used this network when it was trying to find a cost-effective way of printing trivia questions on crisps to boost sales – they found a professor in Italy who had devised an ink-jet method for printing edible dye onto biscuits and the method was adapted to crisps.

If we are looking to build a company based on innovation, expressing a strong internal brand to connect with clients and customers and developing a strong employer brand to attract and retain talent, I urge you, don’t dismiss social networking and social media marketing out of hand. At least explore, learn and research the different platforms available to you before you make a corporate wide decision. You can access alot of resources right here at no cost. And if you are looking for an even broader range of training you can join me at the social media training programme taking place between the 20-29 February 2008 – early bird pricing ends on the 31 January 2008.