A few days ago, something really disturbing happened to me. A friend commented on my status on facebook, and I saw that in my email, but, I could no longer log into facebook! I was shocked when I was instead, directed to an internal error message! Albeit emblazoned with the company logo saying that social networking sites are not allowed..
I am totally guilty for using facebook at work for my own purposes, but that said, I do think that given my short stay at this company in question, the reason why I know many of my colleagues can be attributed to the fact that there is a group online with many of them. That, simply put, told me about them, what they do and where their interests lie. That in turn, allowed the ice to be broken really fast.
On top of that, work related matters and morale is kept high with communication constant. How do you otherwise find a chance to bump into a senior to ask him something when other instant messaging software requires you to personally know the party you are adding beforehand? Well, at least enough to ask him for his skype address. How odd will it be to be asked by an almost stranger?
I do think that in this day and age, where it is the fluidity and availability of information that gives us the cutting age, the restriction of information would only serve to be detrimental. Detrimental to the efficiency of the workforce, and detrimental to morale. Honestly, for something someone uses for a few minutes a day, is it really worth the dissent that will circulate and the resulting inspired dissatisfaction? I am not a new worker, fresh out from school, I know that in an ideal workforce, and especially in engineering, we have a bunch of robots with an infinite work output. I have been doing this for quite a number of years.
We don’t live in an ideal society, and it is not right to try and gain semblance of one by restriction and forcing compliance. Performance of an individual should be gauged by personal merit. Or is it that with the economic climate as it is, more hurdles are put in our path on purpose to make things harder, so that we need to go through a lot more crap to get things done?
