Now that we have become our brand, being a business is a full time gig.
Can a specific and measurable amount of productivity be set and met while allowing our workers to stay connected? You decide. Pick your battles wisely.
This whole idea reminds me of Yvon Chouinard’s memoir, “Let My People Go Surfing”. Yvon also owns a pretty awesome little company that he likes to call Patagonia! In his book he discusses how beneficial it was to allow his employees the opportunity to participate in their active lifestyles as long as they stayed committed to making up the time they took off. Yvon employed many athletic people whose activities, more often than not, were nature dependent. The idea of going surfing on your days off when the waves end up being horrible, can be frustrating when all you can think about is how awesome the swells were during the week while you had to work. While this doesn’t solve the social networking while at work issue, it is a different perspective for sure.
Can we have good waves and surf em' too.
Can a reasonable set of expectations be placed on an employees work output, in order to accommodate social connection during business hours? Can our job description and work requirements be made so crystal clear, that ones ability to multi task or lack thereof could become what makes or breaks them.
Or will it inspire, and promote more freedom, independence and productivity? Controversial? Yup!
Share your experience, strength, and hope with us. We want to know what’s working out there.
When employees go social: Do you know what your employees are doing online?
Come next May, Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong won’t have any trouble answering that question. That’s when 100,000 computers used by the city-state’s civil servants will be disconnected from the Internet. The government is taking this drastic action to “tighten security,” writes tech editor Irene Tham in The Straits Times.
Sure, their survey says — ding! — that the number one reason why American workers use social media at work (34% of respondents) is “to take a mental break from their job.” Moreover, reason number two (27% of respondents) is to “connect with friends and family while at work.” But then comes a list that might make your inner CEO perk up a bit: 24% of the respondents use social media at work to foster professional connections; 20% to help them solve work problems; 17% to foster relationships with co-workers and/or learn more about them; and 12% to ask work-related questions of people outside their organization and/or inside their organization.
