The other day the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article on monitoring employee use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. I’ve written about this before, but it deserves a revisit.
In my opinion, any expenditure on monitoring or limiting access to social networking is misplaced. You see, it’s all a matter of outcomes. The outcome we’re all after is performance. If the required level of performance is achieved, does it matter how much time is spent on Facebook?
Let’s take a step back for a moment. Who’s to say spending time on Facebook or Twitter is a bad thing? Sure, it might be time-wasting in some circumstances, however there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s entirely beneficial for some positions. Regardless, there’s one key truth – limited use of social networking is not an outcome. It’s not something you care about as the end result, rather as a means to an end.
As far as ensuring progress toward outcomes, controlling every minute element of employee time is counter-intuitive. Supervisors should know what tasks employees are engaged in, rather than rely on technology to do so. After all, if an employee wants to slack off, they will. Monitoring Facebook won’t change a thing.