Let’s face[book] it…

Rather than beat the horse further on the age-old debate whether social networking is good or bad for the individual during office hours, it’s scary how this “entertainment” can actually bring your business some financial gain. The line between social networking and business networking is so hazy that it begs the question – can you afford to not be on Facebook at all?

There are many reasons you want to cut off access to the world’s most popular social networking website during work hours, but the number of arguments for it are fast growing. From a work ethic, it’s all bad. If the number of surveys that have been conducted in the US about the number of hours people spend online on communities seem scary, the numbers may not be much different in companies working out of Pakistan. A cursory look at the Pakistani groups from professional to lousy, and you can assess what profile of which people are posting what kinds of notes during official work hours. And though we don’t mean to impose and read messages not meant for us, a lot of these “notes” sound like business.

Take the case of Mahnaz. She is a freelance graphic designer who has a day job as a clerk in a lawyer’s office in Karachi. “The majority of projects I get are through online queries. If I get a chance to check into my personal mailbox during work hours, I can usually whip up some quick designs. Facebook and other social or professional networking websites are blocked at work so I always have to wait until the evening to get to those assignments.”

From a security angle, enabling employees to have access to the internet alone is a dangerous proposition for many organizations, let alone social networking websites. Any means of transacting data with the open cloud is a threat for the organization.

We get the fact that you want employees to focus on the work that they’re being paid for rather than use office resources for their own personal gain, but how about small and medium-sized companies that also depend on these sites for contact-building and networking? The line between social networking which may convert into business is becoming very vague.

There are so many ways to access the Web, is it really worth the time to block the access? You can firewall and secure a network, but you can’t stop employees from using a mobile version of it. “We don’t block any websites because we believe that as long as our team can deliver the projects on time, it doesn’t really matter what they do the rest of the time online.” says Rafi Mustafa, HR Manager at a medium-sized BPO company based in Lahore.

Linked in, Facebook and countless other websites allow for a lot of business potential in addition to the social networking concept. After all, who you know and how you know you know them can sometimes be the difference you need to land that project you’ve been waiting for.