Facebook at the office - Like or Unlike?

Companies are struggling with how to tackle the fact that their employees now has a private life on the computer.

I went to a meeting a few weeks ago with a research agency, and was told by one of the managers that he did NOT accept that his staff checked their Facebook during work hours. I´ve also met up with some ad agencies whose staff was encouraged to tweet, blog, facebook and check in on Foursquare every time they moved away from their desk.

It´s interesting how different the approach to social media is, and how big the gap is between those researching target groups and those creating the messages is. The population is definitely relating to the new media landscape in a huge range of ways. Some are scared, some are curious. Some think it´s stupid to have more than 1,000 friends on Facebook, others think it´s the future.

Employers are trying to find a way to handle the new way of communicating. More than half of the companies in the Us have banned the use of social networking sites such as twitter and facebook in the office. According to Nucleus Research, 77% of workers who have a FB account use it during working hours, and productivity drops 1.5% at companies that allows their employees full access.

This talks against having people logging into their social media sites, but other research draws another picture. A study by University of Melbourne found that staff that was allowed on social networking sites for less than 20 min a day were more productive than those who weren´t.

Facts from The Week.