Do employees waste time on networking sites?

What do Shashi Tharoor, Shah Rukh Khan and Lalit Modi have in common? It’s not IPL. All of them are Twitter addicts. Tharoor’s Twitter controversies are legendary, as is Shah Rukh’s penchant for expressing his not-so-complimentary views about his team on Twitter than within the confines of the dressing room. Lalit Modi has made a sincere attempt to Twitter his way out of the IPL Kochi chaos in his life. Twitter these days has become a lot more relevant and an integral part of our lives than ever before.

Organisations, though, have not reacted very kindly, particularly to the two most popular social media sites — Twitter and Facebook. Many have banned them from the workplace. The view shared by most HR managers is that employees waste time on Twitter, Facebook and Orkut — a view which can be debated. However, is this knee-jerk reaction the right approach?

“Communication paradigms are altering at a feverish pace due to the enormous popularity of Twitter. Though initially conceived of as a means of sharing personal thoughts and brief updates, its role and content has matured from impulsive chatter to substantive, informative bulletins, making it an important resource for information professionals. Undoubtedly, we can extend these benefits by using Twitter in the workplace and maximise its strengths for internal communication,” says Yogesh Mathur, a senior programmer at an information technology giant.

Kishore Patnaik, a technology freak and a HR professional agrees. “A de facto internal network of employees of any organisation can be developed and when juxtaposed with a comprehensive Twitter strategy, we have an impressive tool which can be used to foster effective internal communication and information exchange. Technology is changing rapidly. Make it work for you.”

Yogesh’s and Kishore’s views are shared by many in the corporate world — it is all about recognising change and adapting to it. Twitter is compatible to almost all platforms and interfaces — anyone can read, post and respond to Twitter messages through the web, SMS, mobile, Facebook etc. This flexibility is its core strength.

A directed usage of Twitter is helpful as employees will seek opportunities to share ideas and get networked. Imagine the muscle it will give any organisation, if it creates a customised, interactive, information stream with updates from experts in the field, peers and colleagues across disciplines, leading journals and news agencies, and numerous other relevant authors and publishers.

“At the core of all this is the Twitter strategy,” says Utpal Bhattacharya, chief technology officer of a Pune-based software company. “A Twitter strategy which lists out what’s acceptable, what kinds of communication can be shared on Twitter, a guide on the kind of correspondence which needs to be one-on-one and what needs to be on Twitter, a caution on retweets from and to the external world, training, archiving plans for official tweets and one that documents whether employees must have locked accounts in order to keep the communication private etc, will help organisations make use of this rapidly changing communication preference.” That said, Twitter itself is still new to all of us and hence, many beginners may see it as experimental or awkward. This is, however, a teething problem.

Ravi Subramanian - Banker and author of ‘Devil in Pinstripes’

Article courtesy of Economic Times.