I agree with the assertion that restricting employees outside communications whether by phone, text, email or social medias (twitter, facebook, blogs) will have more negative effects than positive. Human beings are social beings and are therefore intellectually stimulated by social interactions whether in person, digitally or writing.

I believe that appropriate rules and regulations should be relative to the specific industry and job position. If employees do not fulfill their job requirements because they spend too much time engaging in social media then the employer should be able to restrict access. Similar to an employee takes an inappropriately long lunch break. But to simply block access to all social media is like blocking access to a lunch break.

Spencer Ostrander
Parsons School For Design
Sophomore

Not too long ago, i got into a debate with one of the smartest people I’ve ever met about this very topic. I was advocating that large public companies had to restrict Internet usage in order to mitigate all kinds of risk (trade secrets, marketing plans, CEO bathroom habits). He told me I was dead wrong. Over time, I have come to agree with him 100%. One of my favorite expressions is “you can’t legislate the weather” and controlling people’s communication habits in organizations of all sizes is a fool’s game. That said, obviously there are situations where you need to restrict people’s behavior, but these are the exceptions, not the rule. Equally important, even in these highly controlled networks, absolute control is absolutely impossible. So the best policy is to train your people well and treat them with trust and respect so they are motivated to look out for each other and for their organization. Sadly, many managers opt for a command and control stance and simply lay down rules along with threats of punishment should the rules be broken. Think Cheney!

Jeff
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