A recent study by Vnunet found that “nearly a third of younger employees would consider quitting their job if Facebook was banned in the workplace.” The lesson? Don’t expect your employees to be working otherwise they will quit on you. While you are at it, throw in the television and give them a break every 30 minutes. Seriously though, younger employees feel as though they should have total access to the internet. As a member of Generation Y I can confirm the feeling.
I previously worked at a job where they blocked access to most sites and it created a fair amount of stress. I didn’t think that taking a look at Facebook or the news was really that big a time waster but the people I worked for did. I didn’t last long at the job but I don’t think that lack of access to Facebook was the problem. According to the article, another survey “by IT services firm Telindus found that 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.”
This is a high number of individuals that feel it’s their right to have access to these things at work. It shows just how far we have come. Then again, I remember when not being granted access to a radio while working would have been torture. Perhaps social networks are the modern radio? I’ve argued that social networks would become the next television but when was the last time that you were allowed to regularly watch television during work hours?
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Woah, woah… the only way you can be of Gen y is if you are less than 27 (1980 and forward)… otherwise you are Gen X like me..
Comment by Avatar — June 6, 2008 @ 4:13 am
My job finally banned facebook and I think its for the better. Not only its not possible for rumours and other things to spread in the office, i'm a bit more productive.Still it is frustrating to organize or find out about events until after work.
Comment by Leon Westbrook — June 6, 2008 @ 4:40 am
I read this,and thought you meant "will you quit your job to go and work for facebook?"Guess I would.
Comment by Matthew Rudy Jacobs — June 6, 2008 @ 5:36 am
My job finally banned facebook and I think its for the better.
Not only its not possible for rumours and other things to spread in the office, i'm a bit more productive.
Still it is frustrating to organize or find out about events until after work.
Comment by Leon Westbrook — June 6, 2008 @ 5:40 am
It's not just Gen-Y — I'm 43, and probably wouldn't be willing to work somewhere that didn't have broad Internet access. To be fair, Facebook is a ways down my personal priority list: IM and LJ matter more to me. But the basic principle is that it's a dumb policy. A smart company knows that employees need to chill and communicate a bit during the workday. If that interferes with getting their jobs done then they should be canned, but so long as it's kept within reasonable bounds it helps people have lives, and not resent work so much.Internet restrictions really only make sense if you view your employees as dumb identikit drones. But if that's your attitude, I don't want to be anywhere *near* your company…
Comment by Mark Waks — June 6, 2008 @ 8:20 am
Woah, woah… the only way you can be of Gen y is if you are less than 27 (1980 and forward)… otherwise you are Gen X like me..
Comment by Avatar — June 6, 2008 @ 8:13 am
It's not just Gen-Y — I'm 43, and probably wouldn't be willing to work somewhere that didn't have broad Internet access.
To be fair, Facebook is a ways down my personal priority list: IM and LJ matter more to me. But the basic principle is that it's a dumb policy. A smart company knows that employees need to chill and communicate a bit during the workday. If that interferes with getting their jobs done then they should be canned, but so long as it's kept within reasonable bounds it helps people have lives, and not resent work so much.
Internet restrictions really only make sense if you view your employees as dumb identikit drones. But if that's your attitude, I don't want to be anywhere *near* your company…
Comment by Mark Waks — June 6, 2008 @ 9:20 am
I read this,
and thought you meant “will you quit your job to go and work for facebook?”
Guess I would.
Comment by Matthew Rudy Jacobs — June 6, 2008 @ 10:36 am
Limiting my access to the web is like limiting my access to the phone for personal calls. We all know that personal calls should be kept to a minimum. So should Internet use. If you have an employee who is constantly on the phone talking to their friends etc… how do you handle that? Put restrictions on the phones as to the numbers they can dial out and block unrecognized incoming calls? Take away their cell phone? I don't think so. You let the employee know that their behavior is unacceptable and ask them to limit their own access. If it continues, you let them go. Just like you would if they were making an unacceptable amount of personal phone calls. Besides, there are ways to circumvent the blocks and restrictions.
Comment by Identikit Drone #324 — June 6, 2008 @ 1:02 pm
Limiting my access to the web is like limiting my access to the phone for personal calls. We all know that personal calls should be kept to a minimum. So should Internet use. If you have an employee who is constantly on the phone talking to their friends etc… how do you handle that? Put restrictions on the phones as to the numbers they can dial out and block unrecognized incoming calls? Take away their cell phone? I don't think so. You let the employee know that their behavior is unacceptable and ask them to limit their own access. If it continues, you let them go. Just like you would if they were making an unacceptable amount of personal phone calls.
Besides, there are ways to circumvent the blocks and restrictions.
Comment by Identikit Drone #324 — June 6, 2008 @ 2:02 pm
lol, facebook is banned at my place of work, just like hi5, rapidshare etc…To note : I work in a software development company in mauritius and we are in the web 2.0 era!wat a paradox!
Comment by Yashvin — June 6, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
lol, facebook is banned at my place of work, just like hi5, rapidshare etc…
To note : I work in a software development company in mauritius and we are in the web 2.0 era!
wat a paradox!
Comment by Yashvin — June 6, 2008 @ 5:47 pm
Employers are starting to advertise facebook availability as a perk – http://flickr.com/photos/thatgrumguy/2504860326/
Comment by grum — June 6, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
There is always room for distraction. If they block Facebook or whatever other site you'll find another thing to waste your time with. So blocking sites doesn't make any sense.
Comment by Bart — June 7, 2008 @ 11:57 pm
There is always room for distraction. If they block Facebook or whatever other site you’ll find another thing to waste your time with. So blocking sites doesn’t make any sense.
Comment by Bart — June 8, 2008 @ 3:57 am
If you are quitting a job and they require an exit interview, shouldn't you pretty much say nothing?
Comment by John Kurt — June 9, 2008 @ 7:30 pm
If you are quitting a job and they require an exit interview, shouldn’t you pretty much say nothing?
Comment by John Kurt — June 9, 2008 @ 11:30 pm
Gen Y doesn't want constraints put on them and when you ban a social utility that engages your employees to interact with one another people begin to become very uneasy. I would hate to work in an environment where my company told me what websites I could view or not. Obviously, some websites aren't meant for the office, but don't control my Internet usage. Gen Y has grown up on Web 2.0 and it is something that companies must adapt to in order to be successful.
Comment by Komail Mithani — June 12, 2008 @ 8:02 am
Gen Y doesn’t want constraints put on them and when you ban a social utility that engages your employees to interact with one another people begin to become very uneasy. I would hate to work in an environment where my company told me what websites I could view or not. Obviously, some websites aren’t meant for the office, but don’t control my Internet usage. Gen Y has grown up on Web 2.0 and it is something that companies must adapt to in order to be successful.
Comment by Komail Mithani — June 12, 2008 @ 1:02 pm
[...] policy makers read this story we wrote a while back about study findings that losing access to Facebook could make workers consider quitting — some [...]
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