Are you facing social media access restriction in your job?

Well, I think this is a common topic for many MNC companies.  A lot of employees working in big companies are facing the same issue of being restricted to accessing the social media websites in their respective offices.

Companies’ dilemma to social media websites

A recent article from Harvard Business Review discussed about majority of firms with over 100 employees that have yet to embrace the use of social media in the workplace for the average worker.  In that article, it discusses about a growing number of firms such as IBM, Toshiba and Cerner Corporation becoming über-connected workplaces.  They actually made use of social media tools to connect their employees globally and to foster mass collaboration.  It’s not only about implementing new tools, but also embracing a cultural shift to create an open environment where employees are encouraged to share, innovate and collaborate virtually.

Social media tools as the new kind of communication tools (on top of phones and emails)

One thing that caught my attention is that social media is a new kind of communication, in addition to our existing telephones and email addresses.  Nowadays, I do communicate with my friends and acquaintances through facebook and twitter.  It is becoming part of my communication tools already.  Other than myself, the even younger generations have already embraced these tools as part of their lives ever since Internet has already been around when they are very young.

Historical similarities in denial of access during office hours

In the Harvard Business Review article mentioned above, it mentioned that employees were denied for using phones 40 years ago…. And employees were also denied for their email access in 20 years ago… Though I am not that old to determine such things 20-40 years ago, I can imagine the same thing happening for social media restrictive access nowadays.

All IT departments in the world should review their existing IT security policy

If companies are continuing to restrict access to social media, there is a likelihood that the new generations of employees (Harvard Business Review called them as “Millennials”) are prepared to bypass the corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked.  There are a lot of IT security policies that really meant well for the companies.  But because these security policies are not very updated with the marketing trend today, they are actually becoming a barrier to affected companies to grow with the trend.  While security policies cannot be compromised, a new set of security policies need to be enforced due to the increasing need of social media.  I am just wondering when was the last update of education in IT security policies…

Conclusion

While I don’t have a perfect solution to the IT security problem that social media tools can impose, I think the Harvard Business Review has provided a good article about using social media tools in your job.  It is just a matter of time when social media tools will be allowed for access to all employees in the near future…

Image Credit: rheathyurd