There are a few, wait, a lot of companies out there that block the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. from their employees as they fear they will spend every business hour wasting time talking to their friends and not actually working. Whilst this might be true of a small amount of employees, to generalise and punish not only the rest of your staff but your business is policy suicide.
With Social Recruiting now becoming more prominent, companies are now using these sites to attract and source staff to their business. This firstly is fantastic, I love the use of Social Media to engage and communicate with people about wider company values and what makes a business unique. Each company has a personality and any candidate worth their salt will want to know that their personality matches the company they are applying to and there are clear opportunities for growth and development.
But what happens when a candidate turns into an employee and they cannot use Facebook at work to tell their friends that they just had a great meeting with a client, won an award or are off to a day of fun and excitement with their team. This is where I feel some companies seem to lose their way and restrict themselves from being even more successful.
Utilising these sites to attract and sell your business to candidates is great and has multiple benefits. So why then would you, once a new employee starts on day one, or day two, let them know that Social Media sites are blocked to employees? What seemed good enough on the outside, now is against company policy.
There are of course many social media tools to maximise and enhance employee engagement, but by blocking the tools you use as external communication and engagement pathways in to your company, you are sending mixed messages to candidates and employees that what is good enough for some, is not good enough for others.
Why risk polluting your message and perception by blocking sites and your employees that you could actually be leveraging.
