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Are your employees online during the work day?
If not, why not?
My friend Gini Dietrich recently wrote about Executives and the Ostrich Syndrome, as she discussed the reasons that CEOs (and, I might add, small business owners) give for not wanting to jump into the online/Social Media thing. Gini gives this pretty thorough list, and rightly points out that they are all a sign of fear:
- I don’t want people to say negative things about me or the company
- If my employees are using social media, they won’t get their jobs done
- This is for the kids and they aren’t in my business yet
- My customer isn’t online (seriously, I STILL hear this)
- I have no control over what is said online
- It just takes too much time and I don’t understand the ROI
- Is there an ROI? It seems like just a bunch of what you’re having for lunch
- You can’t build relationships online
I could spend a lot of time addressing any and all of these, and yes, I hear them from small business owners as well. But the one that most often makes me break out in hives is the second one:
- If my employees are using social media, they won’t get their jobs done
In some ways this can be a valid concern, so why does it bother me so much? Because it speaks to some inherent problems within the corporate culture of many businesses.
If you’re afraid that your employees will fritter* away their time playing Farmville or chatting with friends on Facebook, it means that you don’t trust them. If you don’t trust them, they will suffer from poor worker morale and won’t trust you. Low morale and lack of trust are generally not among the bedrocks of a healthy business.
When a business owner or manager tells me they don’t trust their employees to be online during work hours, I like to turn the tables on them. I will try, as gently as I can, to ask them:
“Who hired your employees?”
That usually gets them thinking. If our employees are truly untrustworthy, perhaps it means we need to change our management and hiring practices.
So my answer to the people who use this as an argument against Social Media is this:
1. Hire better people – Period.
2. Create a corporate culture that is built on trust – Not everyone you hire is out to rip you off and slack off behind your back. If you trust them, they’ll be happier. Happy workers do better work. Better work makes for happier customers. Think about that for a bit and you’ll understand the ROI fairly quickly…
3. Implement a formal Social Media policy – Such a policy should both encourage your employees to be online, as well as lay out the ground rules and expectations for HOW they will use Social Media and spend their time online. By encouraging them and positioning it in a positive way, you are setting expectations. You might be surprised at how your employees rise to the challenge.
4. Let them loose – Having some freedom online makes for happy workers (see above). Happy workers like their jobs. Happy workers who like their jobs also like to tell other people about their jobs and how much they like them. Last time I checked, that’s a form of marketing.
Are you afraid to allow your employees to use the Internet during work hours? In what ways have you managed the situation to both allow them to be online AND get the job done?
* I think that “fritter” is a word that we need to start using more often. Please try to use it at least once every day in your regular conversation. And I don’t mean apple fritters!
[...] Should Your Employees Be Using Social Media at Work? (inklingmedia.net) [...]
[...] Inherent in that kind of thinking is that your employees just might not be smart enough or savvy enough to worry or think about these things. There might also be fear involved. [...]