A follow on to the Web Naivety post…
Not everyone is panicking and padlocking the computers to prevent people ‘wasting’ time on social networking sites. Found over on the blog of Shel Holtz, a comment from the CEO of Serena Software who has introduced ‘Facebook Fridays¨
“Each Friday, employees are granted one hour of personal time to spend on their Facebook profiles and connect with co-workers, customers, family and friends.”
Even better is the title of the press release: Serena Software Adopts Facebook As Corporate Intranet. If that doesn’t get the vendors of web content management tools panicking… 😉
The CEO – Jeremy Burton – has a more grounded approach towards Web 2.0 tools than most. He wrote an article for ZDNet Asia – Bringing Social Media To Work – describing why social activities are inevitable within the workplace. And he includes the best analogy yet for why and how to embrace social computing in a positive way. IT departments should take note:
¨For most people, the human drive to connect and share is stronger than the duty to spend every possible moment “being productive”. No matter what, people will find ways to socialize and share during work hours. It might be best to treat this like sex education: If your employees are going to “do it” anyway, why not encourage them to channel their social-media impulses in smart, safe ways that can potentially help your business?¨
Genius! 🙂
Related post: Web Naivety
Filed under: Changing Systems – Work; Systems Design – Social Networks
Technorati tags: Social Computing; Web 2.0
Joining Dots 
"Genuis" you say! Indeed yes. I work at Serena and I can tell you that the benefit of us using Facebook is immeasurable. Jeremy mentions that it would happen anyway, which is, of course, correct, however as an employee I'd go further.We're a global company with staff distributed all over the place, not just within the offices. The impact of adopting Facebook is far reaching, remote staff now feel part of the greater whole far more than before, which of course directly improves morale. Cross departmental communication is happening regularly and without the "baggage" you often see in large software companies.Frankly it's been and continues to be, a great motivator.Learning more about the people you spend most of your waking time with can never be a bad thing!Cheers to Jeremy
You're a brilliant example of the positive effects that new technologies combined with common sense can bring to organisationsAnd great to see when media articles too often focus on the negative approach of blocking and banningThanks for the added insight